


Monstrous Terrain

by rayemars



Category: Norse Mythology, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Laufey's A+ Parenting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-11
Updated: 2012-11-11
Packaged: 2017-11-18 11:14:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayemars/pseuds/rayemars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the conclusion of the war between the Aesir and the Jotnar, Laufey takes his choice of spoils from Odin's treasury, and claims his eldest son as a hostage. Concealing his parentage from Thor would be easier if not for the fact that an Aesir can't bear a jotun's touch--at least not a full-blooded one's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monstrous Terrain

When the war is over, Laufey takes his choice of spoils from the Aesir's treasury.

In the brief moments his back is turned, Odin--Odin the crafty, Odin who sacrificed himself to himself for knowledge, Odin who plucked out his own eye for foresight--casts a spell on the dwarves' hammer. It does not move for Laufey, or for the best of his warriors, or for Odin himself even when the lives of his wife and legitimate son are threatened.

It takes eight of his men to drag Mjolnir from the treasury, but Laufey claims it.

He claims Odin's firstborn but illegitimate son as well, as revenge.

When he's brought Asa-Thor to Jotunheim, he weaves spells over the boy: first erasing his earliest memories, then changing the color of his skin, then giving him as much protection against the nature of his land as he can grant an Aesir. The child will be little use as a hostage if he dies soon.

Once he's installed the boy in his hall, Laufey thinks to himself that he should find his youngest again. The half-breed will be a decent playmate for him, and Odin's son might question his strange appearance less as he ages if there's another nearby who looks similar.

He tracks backward from the temple and finds that a maid rescued the infant. Laufey brings them both into his hall, and rewards the giantess for her soft-heartedness. When the child is past suckling age, Laufey takes him from her, names him, and puts him in the same room as Odin's son; he already had to build a fireplace for the spoil, and sees little reason to waste time and resources on a second.

Loki grows up with a minor susceptibility to the cold that is improper for a jotun. He wears stoles and cloaks, slips fur between his metal adornments and his skin, and is mocked for his weakness by his two eldest brothers until they become too preoccupied with their inheritance to waste time on the remainder of Laufey's children.

Thor grows up learning never to touch anyone.  
  
  
  
  
Thor bears the cold even worse than Loki. He steals Loki's clothing often, because Loki is a Laufeyson regardless of the thinness of his blood and for that Laufey makes an effort to give the child what he needs to survive comfortably. Thor may not have Odin's vast conniving cleverness, but he knows how to endure; and he takes what he needs. Loki does not appreciate this.

One evening Thor comes to the dinner table wearing a white stole, only to have Loki storm in minutes later, furious at the theft of his possession.

"That's mine," he snaps, ignoring the rest of the room as if it were empty; in some ways, his youngest is the most like a sovereign.

"It was on the floor," Thor scowls, and pulls the stole tighter around him.

Loki--a sharp, mean child--deliberately places his hand against Thor's arm and shoves.

Thor flinches back automatically. It's not until he looks down that he realizes the typical frostbite is not there: there's no dark handprint where Loki touched.

Loki's grin fades and turns to a quizzical look as he stares. Thor glances at him through the fringe of his matted, uncut hair.

Before Laufey can speak, Thor flings himself from his chair and tackles Loki to the ground.

The boys wrestle viciously on the floor. By the time Laufey leaves his seat and comes around to them, Loki has pinned Thor beneath him, binding his wrists to the ground with shackles of ice.

"Enough," Laufey says, keeping his tone mildly annoyed, careful not to indicate that anything significant has happened. He lifts Loki off of Thor and sets him on his feet, then melts the restraints pinning the spoil's wrists.

He notices as he does that Loki threaded stone through the ice, and thinks that the boy is growing too quickly. He needs to seek out more spell-casters to teach him; Loki's current magic is chaotic, pure instinct, dangerous.

"Why doesn't it hurt?" Thor asks, staring at his arm.

"You are brothers," Laufey replies. "Of course you can touch each other."

"Helblindi and Byleist can't," Loki points out: a sharp child.

"Are you questioning me?" Laufey asks.

Loki looks at the floor. "No, Father."

He leaves them at that and returns to his seat. Loki stands where he is, and Laufey almost thinks he's cowed--until Thor pushes to his feet and Loki snatches the stole from him.

He drapes it over his shoulders and glances at Laufey from the side. "I won, didn't I?"

"Yes," he says, and gestures at their chairs. "Now sit."

Loki takes his place, quietly gloating.

Thor clenches his jaw and takes his as well, and shivers through the meal.  
  
  
Afterward Thor seeks Loki out, grabbing his arm, his hands, his wrists; everything he can reach. Thor stares at his younger brother and runs his hands over as much skin as he can touch before Loki fights back.

"Why are you different?" Thor asks, and, "Does everyone feel like this?" and, "It feels so strange."

"Stop touching me," Loki snaps.

Thor doesn't listen, and Loki lashes out at him for it; and it goes on thus for a while. Laufey, not wanting it to seem like anything of consequence, doesn't become involved except the one time Loki tricks Thor into falling out a window. The spoil heals quickly, broken arm restored as good as new; but Laufey punishes Loki for it regardless. Odin's son is no use to him dead.

This goes on until Loki realizes he has something Thor cannot get anywhere else: he possesses the ability to touch his brother, and not cause pain. There is no one else in Jotunheim Thor can obtain this from.

Things change between them from that day on.  
  
  
  
  
Loki has been hiding from him for a week. He shows up for meals, and for training and studying; but he disappears whenever Thor tries to chase him down afterward, and he hasn't slept in their room for days.

Then one night he stops, and comes back.

Thor is sleeping by the fireplace, burrowed in blankets and in furs stolen from his eldest brother's room--snowstorms have been raging for the last two days, and the bed is too far from the fire--when the door opens. Thor wakes immediately, assuming Helblindi has come for his property and ready to fight to keep it; but it's Loki.

Thor shrugs off the blankets, crosses the room and grabs his brother before Loki can decide to leave again. He drags him over to the fireplace, ignoring the fist Loki beats against his arm and shoulder, and then settles back into the blankets between his two favorite things, one old and one new.

Loki stops punching him eventually, and lies among the warmth and sulks; and Thor falls back asleep.  
  
  
Loki goads him into sneaking into the kitchen the next morning and stealing some of the boar stew meant for their father and elder brothers' meal. Thor is caught and turned over to Helblindi, who was in a corridor nearby on his way to the training grounds. His brother marches Thor back to his room, poking him with a fingertip when he thinks Thor isn't moving fast enough and making him flinch. When they arrive, Helblindi spots his furs and takes them back.

Loki sits on their bed and laughs at him until Thor seizes and wrestles him to the floor.  
  
  
  
  
"Why do I have to do this?" Thor gripes, watching Loki drag the cauldron out of the fireplace. "It's fine."

"No it isn't," Loki retorts.

"Why not?"

"Because I said so," he replies. "Come here."

Thor mutters, but goes.

He hisses when Loki dumps the first handful of water over his head. "It's still cold!"

"Coward," Loki replies, and dunks Thor's head into the cauldron.

Thor lashes out and they fight, and then quit, leaving Loki with a fresh bruise on his chest and Thor with the marks of more ice along his fist and arm. Loki heats the water for a little longer, and Thor sits and lets him wash his hair even though it's still not warm enough. It's turned cold again by the time Loki finishes and tells him to rinse the soap out; but the way his brother grins makes it clear it's a challenge, that he's waiting for Thor to refuse so he can insult him again.

Thor dunks his head in the cauldron and scrubs at his hair until the suds are gone, and then yanks it out with a shudder and moves to the fireplace. Loki is still smirking, but differently now. Thor scowls and shifts closer to the fire.

Loki cuts his hair with a knife he's taken from somewhere. Thor's sure he'll find out where later, when he's accused of stealing it and it mysteriously appears among his clothes during a search. Loki's done that twice before; Thor's complained to their father, and thinks he believes it's Loki doing it, not him--Thor never denies the things he _does_ take, because they're always food or blankets or clothes, and he eats the first too fast for it to be taken back and he can always hunt down more of the others. He thinks their father believes it's Loki doing it, not him; but Laufey does nothing to stop him or defend Thor from the accusations, and only tells Thor that a warrior fights his own battles.

One time Thor found a gold cup in their room before it was noticed missing, and took it to their father. Loki wouldn't come near him for eight days afterward, until a storm rose and froze him out of wherever else he was sleeping. 

So Thor chooses his battles, and doesn't ask about the knife or look for where Loki hides it when he's finished. Instead he huddles by the fire, waiting for his hair to dry.

"Well?" he demands, when Loki stops in front of him and looks down. "What's it look like?"

Loki goes over to the cauldron, pulls up two fistfuls of water and freezes them into a disc. He brings it over and holds it in front of Thor.

Thor makes a face at the sight reflected, clearer than normal ice would be. "It's ugly."

"You're ugly," Loki replies. "That's as good as I could do with how bad it was."

Thor's scowl deepens. "If I'm ugly, so are you."

Loki melts the disc and throws the icy water at him.  
  
  
  
  
As Thor grows older, he starts to think that he doesn't look much like his father, or his father's wife, or his brothers.

His youngest brother resembles him slightly, maybe, since Loki also has this strange hair and slight build, more slender even than him compared to the Jotnar around them. But nothing about Thor is similar to Laufey or Helblindi or Byleist, save the color and ridging of his skin.

He asks about it at first. But Helblindi and Byleist only look down on him without answering; and Laufey tells him he should be more concerned with his battle training, since it's deeply lacking; and his father's wife simply says that she does not ask about her husband's trysts, because they are neither her business nor Thor's.

"Loki does not care who his mother is," she adds. "Why does it matter so much to you?"

 _Loki can touch others_ , Thor thinks. But he doesn't say it, because he doesn't like to draw attention to his weakness.

He doesn't speak to Loki about it. Even though Loki always seems to know things that Thor doesn't, he never shares them unless he feels like it; and Thor hates when his brother gloats about his sharper wit.  
  
  
  
  
"Should we be in here?" Thor asks, looking around the cavern. It's sealed completely from the outdoors: there's no wind within, and the chill comes only from the ice it's made of.

"We're Laufeysons, aren't we?" Loki replies, examining a sword inscribed with runes. "We can't trespass on our birthright."

Thor doubts that explanation will help them if they're caught, but he's been surprised by Loki's ability to talk himself out of trouble before. He leaves the runes to his brother and wanders deeper into the cavern, pulling his cloak around him.

The Casket of Winters sits on its pedestal in the center of the room, and Thor skirts widely around it. He touched it once, as a very young child, and he still remembers the way it left his hand and wrist blackened and immobile for hours afterward. Their father wrapped his arm in fur and called for a healer and told him it meant he was unworthy to be considered for kingship.

Loki wasn't moved into his room yet then; his youngest brother doesn't know about that conversation. At least Thor doesn't think he does--but Loki always seems to know things.

Thor pauses by another weapon, one that doesn't have a thin coat of frost over it like everything else in the room. He eyes it, trying to determine if it's safe to touch or not.

"What's this?" he calls, because he knows Loki's been in here before. The path they took into the treasury was not the one their father built.

Loki grumbles to leave the sword but comes over. Thor instinctively shifts closer to him.

"Oh, this," Loki says. "Odin's hammer. Father took it when he won."

"What's it do?"

"No one knows. Odin only used his spear in battle, and he cast a spell on it before Father stopped him." Loki reaches out and grabs the handle, then wrenches hard, using his full weight and brushing against Thor as he wrenches. It doesn't shift. "It won't move for anyone."

Thor frowns. "How'd he get it here, then?"

"Some of the greatest, most battle-honored warriors dragged it here. On a sledge, like dogs." Loki grins. "I would've loved to see them trudging along the Bifrost like that."

"It's not very well-made," Thor comments. "The handle's short."

Loki shrugs. "Aesir weapons."

Thor reaches out and gingerly touches a finger to the hammer. When it doesn't freeze him, he lays a palm on the head. The metal heats to his touch. "Why'd Father take it if it's useless?"

"Spite," Loki answers simply. "And it must have some great power, if Odin put such a difficult spell on it." Loki touches his fingertips to the head, running them along the carvings, and Thor knows his brother must be feeling something he can't sense, the magic encasing the weapon.

"One day I'll undo it," Loki murmurs. "Let's see Father--" and then he stops himself.

Thor looks at him, but Loki doesn't speak further. Finally, to break the tension in his brother's shoulders, Thor snorts. "I can't picture you slinging a hammer around."

Loki gives him a sidelong look, then seems to pause and consider the image.

"A hammer's a weapon for someone with no subtlety or finesse," his brother declares, and then half-grins and glances at him slyly. "I'd give it to you."  
  
  
Loki runs his palm absently over the Casket of Winters as they leave; and Thor looks away.  
  
  
  
  
Eventually they both grow enough that sharing a bed becomes a nightly aggravation. Thor takes blankets and furs wherever he finds them, but their owners eventually seize them back; and while they do have them Loki takes the bulk, even though he's smaller and more tempered to the cold and can easily do with less. But whenever Thor points that out, Loki just tuts and says it's a shame to see a warrior-in-training, a scion of the House of Laufey, so weak-blooded that he can't endure without a _third_ blanket, which is usually around the time Thor shoves him off the bed--assuming it isn't a clone, leaving him to fall out instead and Loki to cocoon himself in the remaining blankets while Thor rights himself.

Thor is sick of having to steal within his father's house.

He doesn't begrudge Helblindi and Byleist their furs and gold and other fine things, because he'll have his own once he's permitted to join in the raids; and he only half-grudges what Loki wheedles for himself, because Loki was born with a gift for wordsmithing and he sometimes shares. But Thor is sick of having to beg for their father to notice he needs clothes or boots or armor.

Loki insists they're Laufeysons, no matter how little favored they are compared to their elder brothers; but Thor knows he's less of one in their father's eyes than Loki.

He's going to change that--he vowed long ago that he would win their father's approval and regard--but he doesn't know how. Thor spends whole days in training, until he's so exhausted he barely makes it back to their room, where Loki finds him by the fire and sometimes exasperatedly heals the bruises and frostbite he's acquired; but nothing measures up to his brothers. Thor can't wear metal armor for long before the cold seeps into it and locks him up, or leather for much longer before it disintegrates beneath a sparring partner's touch, and he can't dive into a fight bare-skinned because he's too easily brought down. He struggles with archery and throwing knives for a time at Loki's suggestion, but he's unsuited to it, hates the idea of standing outside a battle instead of being in the thick of it.

Every night that he sits at the family table, listening to Helblindi and Byleist boast of their latest raids, and watching Loki casually use magic to push items toward himself or rearrange the silverware and trays when no one else is looking, Thor feels all the ways in which he's wanting.  
  
  
Eventually he and Loki grow enough that sharing the bed is no longer a possibility. Thor complains vociferously to their father, using every argument he can think of for why they need a bigger one; Loki bypasses the entire process, has his latest magic teacher introduce him to a craftsman, and orders him in Laufey's name to come to their hall to build two new beds.

Laufey stares at the giant when he announces his presence in the great yard, and then gives Loki a long look that promises punishment for the insolence; but he doesn't betray that the order was not his own, and sets the carpenter to work.

Loki idles in their room while the beds are being made, studying runes that his teacher Thiassi has given him, and insists on his bed being the bigger of the two. Thor is too tired when he returns from training to care, and only rolls his eyes at Loki's demands and skirts the tools and wood shavings littering their room and falls asleep in order to wake and begin again.

When the beds are made, Laufey pays the carpenter from his treasury, sends him on his way, and has Loki locked up in the cavern beneath the main hall.

His brother is released a few days later. Thor meets him in the corridor outside their room as he's returning from training.

"Don't sleep there," Loki says in annoyance, building a fire, as Thor starts to sink onto his new bed.

He gives his brother an irritated look. "Then where am I supposed to sleep?"

"In your bed," Loki replies, jerking his chin to his own. "Switch them out."

Thor, feeling slow and aching and weary, says, "What?"

Loki returns the irritated look over his shoulder. "That's my side of the room. Switch them out."

Thor sits down heavily on his bed and leans on his sword. "Speak plainly," he demands, closing his eyes against the fatigue. "What do you want now?"

Loki is silent for a long time, until Thor finally opens his eyes and looks at him. His brother is watching him with an expression Thor is too tired to determine.

"You're bigger than me," Loki says. "That bed's yours. Move it to your side of the room and sleep in it, and move mine to my side. Is that plain enough? I can illustrate."

Thor blinks. "You demanded yours be bigger. I **heard** you."

Loki turns to the fire. "If you or I had asked for it in your name, it wouldn't have been done," he says, warming his hands at the flames. "I'm allowed to be petulant and spoiled, so I used that."

Thor blinks again, several times, looking at his brother's back.

Then he lets his sword rest against the footboard and stands, and goes to Loki and wraps his arms around him and lays his head on his brother's shoulder.

Loki makes an annoyed noise and elbows him in the side. "Go move them before you keel over, you self-straining idiot."  
  
  
  
  
Thor pushes the two beds to their right sides of the room and then collapses on his, shifting only enough to jerk the blankets over himself and, later, to grab Loki as he's moving toward his own. Thor pulls him into his bed, then drags the blankets over them both and settles in to fall asleep.

Loki is still for a pause before saying, "This defeats the _entire purpose_ ," so dryly that Thor is surprised he doesn't shrivel up from dehydration right there.

He thinks it's a clever thought, and almost says it out loud; but then he decides it's too much effort and Loki will probably mock him, and says instead, "You were gone for days."

Loki is silent at first, before shaking his head. "Thor...."

Thor half-throws another blanket over him to cut him off. "You can have this too," he mumbles. "Go to sleep."

Loki exhales exaggeratedly, but soon pulls the blanket over himself and stays there.  
  
  
  
  
His youngest brother resembles him slightly, and Thor finds himself growing more and more aware of how close he stands to Loki, how often he seeks his company.

His brother is silver-tongued, steadily charming those among Laufey's household and command that he hasn't currently angered; he praises and flirts and insults and sneers and smiles and makes promises he doesn't always keep once he has what he wants. Half of Utgard would happily see him dead at any given time, and the other half is too busy laughing to remember they used to feel the same. Thor has seen him do it enough to predict what tack he'll take, what aspect he'll show in a given situation; but he never grasps the ability himself. Honeyed speech doesn't come swift enough to his tongue, so he takes the simpler approach of bluntness. It's not always the best tactic--Loki has told him, as if personally affronted, that Thor cannot always use the same trick in every situation--but whenever it serves him ill, Loki is usually there to calm the air with his smooth words.

His brother charms and flirts, and Thor looks at the jotuns to whom he speaks and feels little. There are some giantesses among the servants who aren't terrible to gaze at--Iarnsaxa is pleasant enough--but Thor looks at her and then at Loki and thinks there's little comparison. His brother is slender and swift-handed and quick-tongued, his face almost delicate in contrast to everyone else Thor sees; he gets aggravated when Thor runs fingers over his eyebrows or the shell of his ears, but sometimes puts up with it. His brother does not hurt to touch.

Thor looks at Loki, and looks away, and thinks he must be nothing like his family at all.  
  
  
  
  
Loki comes back late one night, and shakes Thor awake and hands him a hammer made of ice.

"What's this?" Thor demands, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

"A hammer," Loki drawls, and Thor gives him an irritated look.

" _Why?_ " he clarifies.

Loki sits on the edge of the bed. "You insist on being inside battles," his brother replies. "Swords don't suit you. You need a weapon that matches your strength."

Thor looks at the hammer sitting on top of the blankets.

It resembles the one he admired in their father's treasure room. His brother has these fits of generosity sometimes, and Thor knows better than to reject them, even if he wasn't flattered that he's almost always the sole recipient.

"What am I supposed to do with it?" he asks, climbing out of bed and picking it up.

"Hit something," Loki replies. "Obviously."

Thor looks at him to make sure he means it. Loki folds his arms and waits, so Thor slams the hammer down on the ground.

It shudders in his hand, but doesn't crack. Thor strikes the floor a few more times, and then hurls it at the wall as hard as he can.

It shatters into chunks when it hits. Loki makes an irritated noise and goes over to them.

Thor doesn't feel he has to apologize when he was doing what Loki said, so he stays where he is and watches him gather up the pieces.

His brother sits for a while, binding the broken chunks back together and muttering runes over the hammer once it's restored. At last, he holds it out to Thor.

"Do it again," he orders.

The hammer doesn't shatter this time when thrown, but it does crack deeply. Loki scowls.

The third time he remakes it only to have it be damaged again, Loki throws the hammer into the fire and strides out of the room. Thor follows him through the hall and down into the lower caverns, where Loki begins chipping at a new block of ice.  
  
  
  
  
Crafting a hammer that can serve Thor has consumed Loki. His brother spends his free time doing little else but working on the problem. Every failure makes Loki snappish and aggravating, but Thor puts up with it because it pleases him that his brother is so intent on making something for _him_.  
  
  
Weeks pass with no success and Loki finally storms into their room and tells him, "Pack your things, we're going stag hunting tomorrow."

"What?" Thor replies, looking up from polishing his sword. Loki has joined him on hunts before, but it's usually Thor who plans them.

"That's what I told Father," Loki says, pausing by the fireplace and tossing another log on it. Thor almost tells him not to, that they only have a small store left and they have to ration them until he manages to find more; but the log is already burning, and Loki is going on. "The ice here isn't good enough. I want to look somewhere else."

"All right," Thor agrees. "Where?"

Loki gestures vaguely to the sealed window. "Where Ginnungagap was."

Thor raises both eyebrows.

"I'll pack warmly," he replies, and Loki snorts.  
  
  
They leave at dawn the next day, after Thor walks off with two horses from the stables. Loki rides one, while Thor loads the other with their supplies and follows it on foot. He's never taken to riding well; Loki's told him he should try a chariot, but it's a far day off before Thor will have the gold to make one of those.

Loki changed his plans overnight, and so they don't head in the direction of Midgard, the land Odin created within the abyss of Ginnungagap from the bones of their ancestor--their ancestor and his own, for the Aesir race was founded by kin-killers: they sprung from the body of Ymir the same as the Jotnar, but the Aesir murdered him and turned his flesh and bones and teeth into a dwelling for humans, a story that Laufey told Thor and Loki often when they were young.

They do not head to Midgard; instead, Loki steers them toward Niflheim, planning to seek ice in the spot where the rivers that flow from the cauldron Hvergelmir hit that land of mist and darkness. Loki marks the direction and sets his horse in an easy trot toward it, and Thor strides alongside him, guiding his own steed and feeling comfortable in the silence between them.

His brother grows more at ease the farther they go from Utgard. His shoulders loosen and relax, and eventually he begins to tell stories as they travel, a mix of old histories and tales from his various apprenticeships with Jotunheim's sorceresses. Thor listens and laughs and thinks he should have cajoled Loki into one of these trips sooner--it's been too long since he's seen his brother at ease in truth, and not as part of one act or another.  
  
  
It's a long trek to Niflheim, even with few pauses to eat or rest. They have a tent to pitch against the wind and snow when the nights encroach, but it's only meant for those evenings when they haven't run across a house to seek shelter in.

Seeking hospitality is Thor's least favorite part of traveling. Even with Loki beside him, too often the giants who allow them into their homes will scorn or jeer at their size, and even more at Thor's weakness if it's discovered. Thor's temper has never been well-restrained, and is always less so in the face of mockery from those who aren't of his family or his father's household.

The last time they were under a stranger's roof and his weakness was found out--the children of the house were playing in the main room, and one ran into him, causing Thor to flinch back--the giant sneered and asked who was the human pretending to be a jotun who'd come into his hall. Thor picked up the stone cup he was drinking from and flung it at the giant's head.

When he came down from the fight, breathing hard with patches of blood and frostbite along his skin, he couldn't find his brother. Thor went through the bodies and overturned what remained of the furniture, shouting for Loki to no avail; at last he returned to the main hall, and found him sitting by the fire.

"Are you finished?" Loki asked. "You should see yourself."

"Why didn't you answer?" Thor demanded, throat slowly unconstricting at the sight of his brother whole and unharmed. He started to stride toward him--and then he stopped, when Loki's eyes narrowed and he shifted back.

"Why would I alert you to my presence until I saw you'd calmed down?" he replied.

Thor had no answer.

Loki studied him for another moment, and then huffed and disappeared.

"You'll have to bury them," his brother said behind him, and Thor turned to find him standing beside a pillar, hands settling to his sides as he no longer manipulated the clone.

Thor went to do so in silence.

Loki heated water as Thor worked, and then packed up the remains of the dinner while Thor washed off the blood. Loki treated his burns and then they left, and had to sleep outdoors that night.

Thor has tried to hold his temper better since then, at least when Loki is with him. The horror that struck him when he thought his brother dead--when he thought that he'd become no better than the kin-killer Odin, when he thought he would be alone in Jotunheim without Loki's words or grins or touch ever again--has never fully left him. It comes back sometimes when he wakes and Loki isn't there.

Thor tries to hold his temper better when they travel; but it never ceases to be a trial. The house they've stopped at has let them in, but when the giant's wife asks who's joining them for dinner, he answers, "Travelers from the border by Midgard."

"We're from Utgard," Thor replies.

"Really?" the giant says, surprised. "I thought you were half-human." He narrows his eyes across the table. "Are you one of those mixed-bloods with the Aesir? You're too scrawny to be proper Jotnar."

Thor shifts on his seat, curls his hands into fists; but Loki only chuckles.

"They said the same about Gerd," his brother replies, grinning over his cup. "And now she's wifed to a Vanir." He shrugs. "Maybe I should go courting Freya--I hear she's still panting for a husband."

The giant laughs aloud and slaps Loki's back. Loki manages to keep his grip on the cup and not spill the mead, and the giant calls for his wife to bring out the meal.

"So who are you?" he asks, turning back.

Loki grins over his cup again; but this one is sharper, meaner.

"Prince Loki Laufeyson," he says carelessly. "And this is my elder brother Thor."

Thor doesn't suppress a smile as they watch the household break into panic.  
  
  
After the meal--abruptly grander, if slower-arriving, than what would've originally been offered--they sit in the main room for a time, sharing news from Utgard and the local areas with the giant while his wife and daughter spin flax in the corner. Loki repeats and embellishes some of Helblindi and Byleist's latest exploits, telling them so well, and leaving certain bits ambiguous, that the giant has no way to be sure whether Loki and Thor were there too or not. The daughter interjects questions occasionally, until her mother hushes her: "Angrboda, stop interrupting."

They're given the bedroom to sleep in, rather than benches in the hall. Loki grins and whispers, "See? A few choice words are always better than fists," and then--after Thor snorts in disagreement--adds, "I'll be back in a bit."

"Where are you going?" Thor asks; but Loki only gestures vaguely over his shoulder, already walking away.  
  
  
It's late in the night when Loki returns.

Thor is dozing half-heartedly and wakes when he hears the footfalls, on alert until he recognizes his brother's silhouette. When Loki slips into the bed, Thor throws an arm over his waist reflexively and then starts at the chill on Loki's skin.

"Were you outside?" he asks.

"For a bit," Loki answers, sounding sleepy and pleased. "You're warm."

Thor shifts closer, recognizing the invitation for what it is; but he wrinkles his nose when he settles beside him. "You smell."

"Rude."

"Where _were_ you?" Thor demands.

Loki yawns. "The barn. I met the daughter there. Go to sleep."

He frowns. "Why?"

Loki snorts. "I was alone in a barn with a girl, Thor. Why do you think?" He yawns again, and then adds "For haymaking?" and snickers at his joke.

Thor lies still.

Eventually he makes himself draw his arm back and ask, "You laid with her?"

Loki, having nearly fallen asleep, makes a disgruntled noise. "She all but stripped in that room after supper," he says. "It seemed a waste to ignore."

". . . I didn't notice," he says lowly, because he was watching his brother then. "I thought she was ugly."

"That is what eyelids are for, Thor," Loki says, and, "Let me sleep."

He says nothing else, and Loki soon falls asleep. Thor remains awake, watching his brother's back in the dim light. He shoves his hands under his head and clenches them tight to keep from reaching out.

He wants to rub his palms over Loki's skin until the smell of someone else is gone. He wants to wake Loki up and make him tell him what it was like, why he did it, if there have been any others--because his brother is so often gone, working late on his studies or off at some sorcerer's house for training or being disciplined in the caverns or just not around, disappearing the way he's done since they were children. He wants to....

Thor clenches his fists tighter, and sets his jaw and forces his eyes closed, and tries not to think that last thought.  
  
  
They continue to Niflheim the next morning.

The rivers out of Hvergelmir flow too fast to turn to ice, even along the border to Jotunheim. But Loki seems to have planned for that; he fills a large cask with the water, and tells Thor as they're fastening it to the horse, "We'll let it freeze on the way back. I can work with it then."

Thor grunts and ties the last knot. Loki gives him an odd look over the flank, but says nothing.

They take another day to hunt, needing a trophy to bring back lest their excuse for leaving fall apart. Once they've caught and killed a buck, Loki checks that the water is frozen and they depart.

On the trek back, Thor manages their pace so that they bypass the giantess's house without stopping. If Loki cares one way or another, he can't tell. Their return goes slower than their departure, but Loki voices no complaints about stopping early, even when there's still plenty of light in the sky. Instead, he uses the time to work the ice into another hammer. Thor skins the buck and cleans the pelt with snow.

The hammers made with the river's water hold up better than the previous ones, but they still crack when Thor throws them with his full strength. Loki uses up all the ice during their journey trying to make one that can endure; by the time they're in sight of Utgard, he's grown aggravated and short-tempered, his shoulders tense and his smile fixed as they pass through the walls.  
  
  
  
  
After their return, Thor throws himself into training, exhausting himself daily because it's better than thinking. Finally one of his teachers--a giant who's developed some grudging respect for his strength and dedication, even if he thinks Thor has no place trying to be a warrior--tells him he's going to kill himself if he doesn't rest, and orders him to go do so. Thor sourly obeys.

He drops face-first on his bed, dragging blankets over him, and falls asleep until a hand stroking his hair wakes him.

"You're not usually back so early," Loki says.

Thor's response is garbled into the mattress. His brother huffs.

"Let me guess," he drawls. "Someone finally noticed you were trying to murder yourself in the name of training, and decided they didn't want to deal with the corpse, so they sent you back."

Thor pushes away suddenly, rolling onto his side to glare up. Loki, standing by the edge of the bed, pulls his hand back slightly in surprise.

"You did that," Thor accuses. "You told him to send me away." He starts to rise to his feet, and Loki lays a hand on his arm.

"No I didn't," his brother says. "I'm just not blind." When Thor continues to scowl suspiciously, Loki rolls his eyes. "You already overtaxed yourself daily," he says patiently. "And now you've begun doing it even more--and I'm amazed you found the stamina to do so--because you're avoiding me."

Thor startles and then glares down at the floor. "No I'm not," he says sullenly.

Loki gives him a disbelieving look and shakes his head. "Leave the lying to me, Thor," he says, sitting beside him. His hand is still on Thor's arm, and Thor leans into it despite everything, because his brother so rarely extends a touch first. "I'm better at it."

When Thor doesn't respond, Loki tilts his head. "Give me time," he coaxes. "I'll get it right soon. Then you can show them all how strong you really are."

Thor blinks, confused, and then realizes Loki thinks he's angry about the hammers. He hasn't thought about the giantess at all.

He starts to tell Loki that that isn't it--and then he manages to catch himself, mouth open, before he speaks.

Isn't it better if his brother thinks he's sulking over a promised weapon, and not that he's jealous of his bedpartners? One of these things won't send Loki clamoring to their father for his own room, won't leave Loki avoiding touching him for the rest of their days; and one of them will.

". . . All right," Thor says.

Loki exhales and pats his arm once. "Impatient," he mutters, and pushes to his feet. His brother looks down at him, and Thor doesn't lift his head to meet his eyes.

"You need rest," Loki decides. "You've looked half-dead these last days. Get some more sleep."

Thor glances at the sealed-up window. "What time is it?"

"Still midday," he answers, and turns to go. "You have plenty of time before supper. I'll wake you again."

"All right," Thor says once more. He watches Loki leave, and then drops back onto the bed and presses the heels of his hands hard against his eyes.  
  
  
  
  
Thor sleeps for nearly two days straight, spending the little time he's awake either eating or testing a new hammer Loki brings him. By the evening of the third day, he can't fall asleep properly at night; he lies in bed, half-dozing, as Loki enters and warms himself by the fire and then goes to bed himself. Thor resists the urge to toss or turn, knowing it'll keep him awake longer, and tries to talk himself into slumber. If he staggers onto the training field tomorrow, he'll just be sent back and told to rest more, and he's had enough of that.

He's still trying, and failing, when he hears Loki's breath catch.

Thor blinks his eyes open, and then rubs them with a frown. When he hears the sound again, he leaves his bed and goes to Loki's.

The fire's dying down, staving off the chill of Jotunheim less and less, so Thor climbs under Loki's blankets without asking. His brother startles violently.

"Why are you awake?" he demands, voice strained, curling away from Thor.

"I've slept enough," he replies. "Were you in another fight?"

"No," Loki snaps. "Go away. Get out of my bed."

Thor doesn't listen, because he doesn't believe him. He drapes an arm over Loki's side and feels his brother tense beneath it, feels how Loki has a hand pressed against his stomach, blocked by the legs he's drawn up. Thor frowns again.

"Are you sick?" he asks, thinking of the fevers he used to get as a child, when he had to spend days sitting in front of the fire, wrapped in furs, slurping the hot drinks his father's wife would exasperatedly bring him. Loki's never had a fever that he knows of, but Thor doesn't smell blood. "What's wrong?"

" _Nothing_ ," Loki hisses. "Get **out**."

Thor runs his hand down Loki's arm, trying to find where he's pressing to learn what's injured. He has to shove Loki's legs aside when his brother brings them in closer; Loki kicks him in the shin and rolls away.

Thor exhales in frustration and tackles him. Loki is the only wrestling partner he's ever had, and Thor knows how to pin him as long as he isn't cheating with magic. "Just _tell_ me," he says in annoyance, trapping Loki in a half-hold. Loki tries to snap an elbow into his side, and Thor takes the opportunity to pin his arm. He leans over and runs a hand down Loki's stomach, feeling for a bruise or a cut; his brother makes so many enemies--

His hand brushes Loki's erection and his brother makes a small noise, going still against him.

Thor's mind freezes at the same time as his body.

Loki says nothing to him, his silver tongue apparently failing him for once, and Thor is left unsure what to do.

He should leave. He should push away, go back to his own bed, ignore this, let Loki laugh it off in the morning. He should....

He's barely even imagined this, always just pictured Loki beside him in bed without trying to determine why or how. And now that something similar is right in his hands--and if Loki is so ready, maybe he won't care if Thor pushes just a little farther, urges him on just a bit more--

It's a shameful thought to have, and Thor feels disgust cut into him.

But he also feels Loki's back pressed against his chest, rising and falling with his shallow breaths as he remains caught between Thor's body and the mattress. Both sensations make him ache in different ways, and Thor bites his lip hard as he tries to force himself to choose what he should instead of what he wants. Loki lies quiet and tense as he worries it, face still turned away.

Then he suddenly lashes out.

Thor is caught by surprise and Loki seizes the advantage, kicking aside the blankets and rolling them so that he's leaning over Thor, hands braced above his shoulders and knees astride his hips.

"If you're going to interrupt, Brother," Loki says, tone as mean as his smile, "then you might as well be of some use and lend a hand."

Loki grins down at him, sharp and challenging and defensive, and Thor recognizes that he's supposed to get annoyed. He's supposed to push Loki aside and go back to his own bed, or else make fun of him for such a ridiculous statement--Loki is his younger brother. Loki is his younger brother, and he can apparently find lovers easily enough; he doesn't have to resort to Thor. Their room isn't that far from the servants' quarters.

The thought makes him bite his lip again. Loki's eyes flick to it, and when he glances back up his brows are beginning to draw together, harsh grin fading. Thor has been silent for too long, stayed in his bed too long; he doesn't know how this could be salvaged even as a bad joke any more.

So he chooses what he wants instead of what he should, and reaches up and touches Loki's cheek.

"Then," Thor asks carefully, trying not to let his voice shake, "...I can kiss you?"

Loki blinks and stares down at him with wide eyes, looking wrong-footed in the dying light of the fire. Thor takes it for the answer he hopes it to be and pushes himself up, pressing his lips to Loki's.

Loki's breath hitches as he jolts at the touch; but he doesn't shove away. Thor hesitates for a heartbeat, another, almost for a third but he can't wait any longer, not when Loki is still _here_ , so instead he wraps his arms around his brother's waist and pulls him close. The move pins Loki's erection between them, the head dragging wetly against Thor's stomach above his loincloth. He shivers at the feeling, and then shakes harder and swallows when Loki groans and rocks against him.

Thor sucks in a breath when Loki grips his shoulders, fingers digging into his skin as he rocks against him a second time. When he does it again, harder, Thor drops down to the bed with a moan, pulling Loki with him, unwilling to loosen his grip even when he squirms. Loki drags himself further up Thor's chest to kiss him again.

Thor has never kissed anyone before, only knows the basics involved; but Loki teaches him. He soon fumbles at Thor's loincloth too, tugging blindly on the leather thongs until they're undone. Thor shivers at the feel of his fingertips when Loki brushes the fur to the side, and his brother uses his distraction to break free of his arms, sitting up on his thighs and staring at him.

"...So big now," Loki murmurs. "I'll never match up to you in anything, will I?"

Thor blinks, thrown by the weariness in his brother's tone. But then Loki strokes his knuckles along his erection, and he jerks into the touch and forgets everything else. Loki curls his fingers around him with a smile and Thor moans again, gripping his arm tightly.

Loki's loincloth is already half-loose from before, pushed up and aside, and Thor grabs his belt and tugs until the clasp snaps. Loki grunts as Thor drags it from his hips and pulls him back against him.

"I can't move my hand," Loki tells him, and squeezes, making Thor shudder.

He eases his grip slightly but brings his knees up, caging Loki between his thighs. Loki wriggles until his erection is alongside Thor's; when he grips them both, Thor closes his eyes and presses his head back against the mattress, terrified that this is a dream, that he'll soon wake and find his brother sleeping in another bed and things the same as ever between them. " _Loki_."

His brother makes a pleased sound and leans his forehead against Thor's neck.

"Say my name again, like that," Loki tells him breathily, shifting more to bring his other hand down and stroke with it as well. Thor grips his shoulders to brace him. "I like it."

Thor does so, repeating Loki's name over and over until his brother's breath starts to catch, his shoulders tensing under Thor's palms a few heartbeats before he comes. When Loki slumps against him, Thor wraps his arms around him once more and ruts hard against him, trying to memorize the feel of Loki's back against his arms, Loki's hips against his thighs, Loki's hands on him, the way his brother shivers and gulps for air as he rides out his orgasm.

When he finishes, Loki begins to stroke him once more. Thor trembles under the touch, trying to hold out, not wanting this to end; but then Loki kisses his jaw and murmurs "Thor," and his restraint snaps at the sound of his name spoken so affectionately from his brother's lips. Thor holds Loki tightly as he spills out in his hands, and hopes he doesn't wake from this.

They lie like that for a time, until Loki squirms again and says, "Let go. You're too bulky to sleep on."

Thor releases him, but keeps an arm over Loki's waist as his brother slides down to lie by his side.

"...I thought something was wrong with me," he says quietly, tracing the line of Loki's hipbone with his fingers.

Loki shifts under the touch. "Something is wrong with both of us," he replies, setting his head on Thor's shoulder. "Anyone with eyes can see that."

Thor pauses, but then lays his hand over Loki's hip. "I meant," he stumbles, "...because I wanted you. Like this."

"So did I," his brother says, and closes his eyes.  
  
  
After Thor falls asleep, Loki remains awake and rests his palm on his brother's chest. He can feel the magic lying on Thor's skin, having long ago recognized their father's work, and he toys with the spell, fraying the ends of it. It untangles easily under his fingers; he's been a more powerful sorcerer than Laufey for some time now.

Another bit of the spell's binding picks loose under his touch, magic spilling out through the chink, and then Loki freezes and stares as his fingertips slowly turn pale.

The color slides upward, eating away at his skin. The cold of the room strikes him harder as it does, and he soon feels it do the same where his head rests against Thor's shoulder.

Loki lies still, watching his hand change. When the color reaches his wrist, he twists the spell up, halting the damage he's done; and then he untangles himself from Thor's grip and leaves the bed.

Loki pulls the water jar away from the guttered fire and plunges his hand into it. The water inside is chilled, and with the temperature his skin slowly--too slowly--regains its proper color.

He hears Thor shift in the bed and immediately tilts away, hiding the wrong half of his face. Loki grabs a handful of water from the jar and presses it against his cheek and temple, shuddering at the cold and at the feel of such soft, smooth skin where it should be leathered and ridged.

"Loki?" Thor mumbles. "What're you doing?"

"Washing," he answers, as his skin reverts beneath his hand.

"Oh." The bed creaks as if Thor is considering getting up to do the same; Loki presses his hand harder against his face. Then his brother drops back against the mattress. "You can do that later."

" _You_ can do that later," Loki replies, a small smile on his lips to make the tone of his voice right. "But I am going to do it now."

Thor grumbles something and starts to get up again.

His face at last feels as it ought to, and his hand is restored. Loki says, "Fine, fine," and "Greedy," and returns to the bed.

Thor immediately wraps his arms around him, curling against his back. Loki seizes up and jerks away.

Thor follows him across the bed, laying a hand on his back. "Loki?" he asks, hesitantly. There is so much else behind that one word; his brother is an open book, a spell in a language he's just learned to read, and Loki knows precisely how much he could hurt him now that Thor's given him the worst secret he thinks he has. He curves the corner of his mouth.

"You crawled into _my_ bed," he replies. " _You_ can sleep in the damp spot. I'm not."

Behind him, Thor exhales shakily and then snorts.

When his brother drapes an arm over his waist, Loki is careful not to let himself tense. But the spell is working properly again; Thor's touch does nothing to his skin other than slowly warm it.

After his brother is settled against him once more, Loki reaches for his discarded loincloth on the floor and examines the clasp. The brass is twisted and bent where Thor wrenched it.

"You broke my belt," he says.

"Sorry," Thor mumbles against his shoulder, as if it were a simple, everyday occurrence.

For Thor, it is.

His brother's strength is prodigious. Loki has heard others talk about it, when Thor is absent and they think he isn't there. If he weren't so easy for others to cripple with just a touch, there would be none among their father's warriors who could stand up to him, even armed. His brother's strength disturbs many within Laufey's command.

Their father has taken great care to keep this from Thor.

Their father has taken great care to keep many things from him, apparently.

"Don't hate me," Thor says suddenly, mouth still pressed against his shoulder, making Loki blink.

"What?" he replies, and then scowls at the response, still feeling stupid and off, uncertain. He's still rewriting his assumptions; he doesn't like it.

"Don't wake up tomorrow and hate me," Thor says, pulling him closer. "Don't. Please."

Loki is silent.

At last he curls his hand over Thor's, slipping his fingers between his brother's.

"I couldn't," Loki says quietly, the truth awkward on his tongue. "Even if I tried."

Thor sighs against his shoulder, and twists his hand around to hold Loki's. His brother falls asleep beside him, wrapped up in blankets and furs and Loki's double-edged affection.

Loki rubs his thumb slowly over the broken clasp, and does not rest for hours.  
  
  
  
  
In the days that follow, Thor thinks he's ruined things between them despite what Loki promised. His brother is more distant now--he doesn't hide away as he used to when they were children, punishing Thor with his absence, and he rarely pulls away when Thor reaches for him; but his muscles are always tense beneath Thor's hands for a heartbeat before they forcibly relax.

Thor has never touched anyone for long in his life besides Loki; he knows his brother's body like his own. Loki is not the same toward him anymore.

But Loki also slips into his bed when he returns in the evenings, fits himself against Thor's side and kisses him until Thor forgets his weariness from training and sinks into the feel of Loki's skin against his, of his brother's hand in his hair and his legs tangled between Thor's own. Thor thinks the problem could be that he's trying to understand what's driving Loki to behave in these two different ways when instead he should just take his brother's actions at face value, as they appear to be--even though he knows better than to ever do that.

He doesn't know how to restore his brother's trust in him, so instead Thor holds Loki close when he comes to him, because even if he can't bring him back he can at least keep him from going away.  
  
  
  
  
Loki has been gone for hours. Thor finally follows his trail down the hidden path into the treasury, where he finds his brother sitting in front of Odin's hammer and looking infuriated.

"You missed dinner," Thor tells him.

"Who cares," Loki snaps, still glaring at the hammer.

"You will, when you're hungry," Thor replies. "And Father did. He asked where you were. I said studying."

Loki only sneers. He's been angry at their father lately, more than usual; Thor doesn't know the reason why. Loki hasn't been punished for anything recently, but he and their father are rarely in the same room save for meals.

"What are you doing?" Thor asks, moving to stand beside him, knee resting against Loki's shoulder. Loki doesn't tense up for once; he barely seems to notice.

"This damned spell," he growls. "It's not like any sorcery we have."

Thor shrugs. "Aesir rubbish."

"It isn't _rubbish_ ," Loki retorts. "It's the All-father's own work. This is the most powerful thing in all of Jotunheim. There's no crack, no flaw, nothing I can pull on." Loki scowls and drags his fingers over the head of the hammer, nails scraping at whatever he feels there.

Thor frowns. "The Casket of Winters is the most powerful thing in Jotunheim."

"The Casket is the most powerful thing **made** by the Jotnar," Loki says. "There's a difference."

Thor deepens his frown, not liking where this talk is turning.

"If this were more powerful than the Casket, the Aesir should have won," he replies, and then changes the subject before Loki's anger turns on him. "Why does it bother you so much?"

"Because I can't break it."

Thor looks down at his brother, fists clenched on his thighs as he glares at the weapon coated in a magic he can't manipulate. He reaches out and lays a hand on Loki's shoulder.

"'Yet,'" Thor adds. "You will soon enough. Give it more time, keep practicing."

"Because that has worked so well for you," Loki says coldly, and Thor's grip tightens.

He lets go a moment later. "If it can't be undone by any power in Jotunheim, it isn't worth the effort," he says. "We took it from them; that's good enough. You shouldn't be lowering yourself to Aesir magic, anyway."

"Magic is magic," Loki replies in annoyance. "Borders only change the form."

Thor gives up for the time being, because this is Loki's territory and he's always out-matched within it. "Come back," he says instead, resting his hand on Loki's shoulder once more. "There'll still be hot food in the kitchen if we move quickly."

Loki makes an aggrieved noise and drags his hands over the hammer again, twisting his fingers and murmuring under his breath. Thor watches as his brother tries to influence the magic, fails, and throws his hands up in disgust.

"Let's go," Loki mutters, pushing to his feet.

Thor gives the hammer one last look as Loki starts to leave: this one foreign weapon has gotten deeper under his brother's skin than anything he's ever seen. Thor reaches for the handle and jostles it idly.

It lifts away from the slab with ease.

Thor stares at the half-tilted hammer, remembering that last time Loki had thrown all his strength into pulling it to no avail; and then he hefts it.

"Loki," he calls. "You did it."

Loki glances over his shoulder with a scowl--and then his brother turns sharply, staring at him wide-eyed.

Thor grins and holds the hammer out. "You did it!"

Loki comes over to him slowly, a wary look on his face as he reaches out and presses his fingertips to the head of the hammer; and then his expression changes to something Thor can't read.

Then, at last, he half-smiles and glances at Thor's eyes.

"Well," Loki says, "I said I would give it to you, didn't I?"

Thor's grin widens as he steps back and takes a few practice swings. Loki shifts further away.

When he's grown more used to the grip, Thor rests the hammer against his shoulder and says, "Let's go show Father. You'll be called the greatest sorcerer in the land, beating Odin's work!"

"No," Loki replies, and Thor blinks. "Don't say it was me."

"Why not?" he asks.

Loki looks at the hammer again. "There is an advantage to secrets, Brother. You should learn to keep some once in a while."

When Thor furrows his brow, Loki shrugs a shoulder. "I make enemies enough here. I don't care to draw the All-father's ire, too."

"He'll never get within our walls," Thor says confidently.

"All the same." Loki tilts his head. "Say you tried to pull it when I told you that it's never moved before. That's reasonable enough."

Thor gives him a disbelieving look. "And when Father asks _how_ it moved for me? What do I say then?" Thor glances at the hammer propped against his shoulder. "He's not just going to accept that I could pick it up when no other jotun could."

"Wouldn't it be interesting if he did," Loki murmurs.  
  
  
Loki disappears between one moment and the next while they're waiting in the corridor, right before a servant returns to say their father will see them. Thor curses under his breath but drags his cloak tighter and enters the great yard alone.

Laufey stills on his throne and stares at him. His elder brothers, speaking to him from below, do the same. Thor stops at the correct distance and waits for their father to acknowledge him, the hammer a heavy but increasingly comfortable weight on his shoulder.

"Well," their father says at last, "I suppose there's a story here."

Thor sets the hammer on the ice and kneels. "Loki and I were in the treasury," he answers, speaking the explanation as his brother laid it out. "He was telling me how the hammer was dragged back from Asgard, and I tried moving it on a whim." Inspiration strikes, and he lays a hand on the head and adds, "I guess Odin's spell wore off."

Helblindi steps forward, but their father lifts a hand and he pauses.

"Since you discovered that, I suppose you can use it," Laufey says. "Maybe it will improve your training." Their father rests an elbow on his throne and asks, "Why were you in the treasury?"

"I followed Loki down there," Thor answers honestly, since his preference for his brother's company is well known.

"Ah," their father says lowly, and Thor realizes he didn't ask Loki if he had permission to be in there. He knows his brother took his own path into the cavern, but he assumed it was just Loki's partiality to the hidden routes he's so skilled at sussing out.

Thor waits, but their father says nothing else. His brothers stare at him warily, and Thor tries not to frown. He knows Helblindi and Byleist have little love for him, but they're his brothers all the same, and he doesn't like being looked at as though he's their enemy.

Their father glances at the hammer once more, and then leans back in his throne.

"Tell your teachers I said for you to begin training with that weapon tomorrow," Laufey orders, and then dismisses him with a nod.

Thor picks up the hammer as frustration rises in his chest.

Will nothing ever impress his father? No deed Thor has ever laid at his feet seems to meet the standard set for him, and some days he feels he's exhausted all he has to give.

From the corner of his eye, Thor sees Loki slip out from behind a boulder and leave the yard.  
  
  
Things change between them again from that day on.  
  
  
  
  
With the hammer, Thor soon is able to keep the other jotun from reaching him in a fight. When he destroys two training dummies, breaks a sparring partner's leg, shatters a pillar, and cracks his own shoulder in the process of discovering that the hammer will return to him when thrown, his mentor makes a sour face and says they'll all be better off turning him loose on Midgard.

"The poor wretches," Loki says in their room later, voice breathy--he laughed at Thor being struck by his own weapon until Thor snapped an elbow into his stomach--as he's healing Thor's shoulder. It's the first time he's been back since Thor showed the hammer to their father, because his belated realization was correct: Loki didn't have permission to be in the treasury, and Laufey punished him for it. "They'll live in fear of your name for the rest of their days."

The next day Helblindi challenges him to a sparring match, and their father comes to the training grounds to watch. Thor thinks that maybe this, at **last** , is what will earn their father's approval, and throws himself into the fight with all he has.

He doesn't come out of the battle mindset until he realizes he can't move--his legs and arms are trapped in ice, though it's already melting around the hammer. Thor jerks violently against the restraints and then spots his eldest brother lying bloody at his feet. He goes still.

Their father slowly rises from his seat. Byleist is already standing, sword unsheathed; only Loki remains seated, cloak wrapped about himself.

"It's impressive the difference a magic weapon can make," Laufey says mildly, and then sends for a healer. As his brother is carried from the grounds, the ice melts away, leaving Thor free to move again. He's summarily dismissed from the field.

"Stop chafing it," Loki says as he joins Thor on the walk back to their room. Thor drags a hand over his frozen skin one last time and then makes himself stop.

"Father didn't have to go that far," he mutters, still vexed at being held immobile.

Loki gives him a sidelong look. "I did that, you fool."

Thor scowls and glares at him. "Why?"

"You were about to kill the crown prince of Jotunheim," Loki says, and Thor's steps falter. "Did you think you'd be allowed to live after that?"

"I wouldn't have..." Thor starts, and then cannot finish the sentence, remembering tearing through that house searching for Loki among the corpses.

"Yes you would," Loki replies, shrugging his cloak over his shoulders and chest. "When bloodlust takes you it doesn't let go easily."

Thor shifts his grip on the hammer and stares at the ground, and thinks again of Helblindi's battered face.

"...Thank you," he mumbles. "If you hadn't been there...."

"Helblindi would be dead," Loki says simply, and shrugs again. He resumes walking. "And we would be fleeing."

Thor catches up and walks alongside his brother in silence, unsure if he is more concerned with what nearly happened--another brother, almost murdered--or pleased that Loki would have escaped with him without a second thought.  
  
  
Soon after, their father gives Loki a new stole made of thick, warm fur. Thor watches his brother go about in the unspoken but blatant reward, and can barely stomach to pick up the hammer for two days afterward.

But the feeling passes.  
  
  
  
  
Thor is sent on his first raid into Midgard soon after, while Helblindi is still healing. The small group of giants sent with him are displeased at his having command, and Thor tries to prove he deserves it by leaving nothing standing behind him. They return home loaded with goods that Thor sets before the throne so his father can take first pick, as is proper; he takes what remains of his share back to his room.

Loki comes in while he's still piling up the firewood he returned with. "I heard you were successful."

"Yes," Thor says with a wide grin, and then gestures him over. "Come here."

Loki saunters over with an eyebrow raised. Thor rummages through his half-unpacked gear, then undoes the fur wrap he kept close at hand despite the biting comments from the other giants. Within is a heavy gold armband, ornately engraved.

"Here," Thor says, holding the spoil out. "This is for you."

Loki looks at the band for several moments, and then glances up at Thor. "You're supposed to give Laufey first choice of everything," he reminds him.

"Father didn't give me this hammer, you did," Thor answers.

A smile flashes on Loki's face at that, though he raises an eyebrow a moment later. "How am I to explain my sudden possession of gold?"

"You can come up with a reason," Thor says confidently, but then pauses. "Did you want something else? I can bring it back next time."

"No," Loki replies. He touches the armband with a finger for a moment, and then brushes Thor's hair away from his face and kisses him softly. "Thank you."

Thor sets the gift aside and pulls him closer, wrapping his arms around his back. Loki chuckles, but tangles his fingers in Thor's hair and kisses him more strongly.  
  
  
  
  
Loki takes the spoils he brings, but getting him to sit for Thor's tales grows steadily more difficult. He can never be sure when Loki is listening to him or not; his brother will read or toy with spells as Thor talks, acting as though not one word of ten is passing his ears--and then he'll question Thor on some minute detail that caught his attention.

"Midgard is interesting," Thor promises. "You should come with me. We could test their heroes."

Loki smirks faintly. "Your method of fighting and mine are very different."

Thor grins. "A raid, then," he says. "We'll find a rich hall, you can send out your illusions to bewilder them, and then I'll storm in."

Loki snorts. "Where's the glory in defeating a bunch of confused humans?"

"There isn't any," Thor replies, and Loki blinks and looks at him. "But it brings in supplies. If you want glory, we _will_ have to go after a hero."

Loki rests an elbow on his chair arm and props his chin on a fist. The firelight glints on his armband; the story he crafted worked just as Thor knew it would, a tale of meeting a Midgard prince who'd ventured into Jotunheim and receiving the gold as reward for a simple love spell. "Glory is for warriors."

He's losing his brother's attention, he knows, so Thor gropes about for something else to entice him. Less and less holds Loki's interest these days--he drifts from one thing to another, casts them all aside, bored with everything he touches. His pranks have increased, and grown crueler; Iarnsaxa still wears a veil to cover her shorn hair. Their father has warned and punished him multiple times.

Thor has a thought.

"Is entertainment for tricksters, then?" he teases. When Loki just gives him a look, Thor goes on.

"They have sorcerers there, too. I ran into one once," Thor recollects, and leans back in his chair. It's made of heavy carved wood, spoils from a past raid that he carried back with him; their father dismissively let him keep it. Loki's own chair is made of ice, crafted by himself and covered with furs, and sits further back from the fire. "We could find more of them for you.

"They're not as ugly as I expected," Thor adds, recalling Loki's childhood tales of the gods who visited their father's halls, gods he's never seen beyond a few in battle gear. "The Midgardians. I thought they would be, if they're supposed to resemble the Aesir, but they really aren't. They look more like us," he tells Loki, tugging his own hair briefly, "just weaker."

"It sounds as though you're going soft," Loki says, after a long silence. "Next you'll be seeking a wife from among them."

Thor gives him an annoyed look. "That's not what I meant."

Loki shrugs a shoulder.

"You like that Aesir weapon well enough," he replies, gesturing to Mjolnir resting on the ground beside Thor's chair. "It never leaves your sight anymore."

Thor glances at it. "It may be an Aesir weapon," he says, "but it came from you. That's what matters."

A smile flickers across Loki's face--a genuine one--and Thor thinks this may be as good a time as any.

He shifts in his chair and adds, "I wanted to speak to you about it."

The warmth in Loki's expression disappears, folded up into something unreadable. "Yes?"

Thor, surprised by the abrupt change, flounders. "It...." He shakes his head. "I'm sure it must be.... Don't think me mad."

"It's difficult to think you anything until you finish a sentence," Loki replies, and Thor scowls.

"I'm sure it's more of Odin's magic," he says. "That's why I wanted to ask you." When Loki only continues to eye him, Thor exhales and rests his palm on the butt of Mjolnir's handle.

"I feel as though it tries to speak to me sometimes," he says quietly.

Loki's expression doesn't change, but a moment later he drops his arm and leans forward, eying the hammer. "Saying what?"

Thor shakes his head. "I don't know," he answers. "It's muted, as if my ears were stopped up. But it keeps happening."

"When?"

"When I'm training here. Sometimes during a raid in Midgard, but that's rare." He pushes Mjolnir closer to Loki. "Can you determine why?"

His brother doesn't reach for the handle. "I doubt it," Loki says, and folds his hands between his knees. "Aesir magic is obscure to me."

"You worked it once before," Thor insists.

"Without realizing it," Loki counters. "What if I attempt this and accidentally revert it to how it was? You'll be left weaponless."

Thor drags his hands down his thighs. "There are others I can use."

"But none suits you as well as this one," Loki says quietly. "Does it truly bother you so much?"

Thor shifts uncomfortably. "It's...strange," he says. "No one else--you've never heard it, have you?"

Loki shakes his head.

"No one seems to," Thor mutters. "Why does it only speak to me?"

"Why are only you unable to touch the rest of our kind?" Loki asks. "Why am I the only exception?" His brother smiles meanly. "Perhaps if we knew our full parentage, we would have other answers as well."

"--What are you implying?" Thor asks sharply.

"Something very obvious," Loki responds. "You said yourself that Midgardians look similar to us, and everyone knows the All-father and his brothers crafted them to resemble the Aesir."

" _Stop_ ," Thor demands.

Loki looks at him in silence for a long time.

Then he rises to his feet and leaves. Thor grabs his arm--but his hand passes through it, and then the clone dissipates. By the time he's shoved out of his chair Loki is through the door. He disappears between one corridor and another before Thor can catch him, down some hidden path he's found or made.  
  
  
Loki keeps himself distant afterward. He doesn't return to their room to sleep, and is always somewhere else, always around others, until Thor eventually begins tracking him as he would prey. In time he catches Loki passing through an empty room and corners him, and then goes to his knees and presses his forehead to his brother's thigh and begs in a voice of cracking pride until Loki at last relents.

" _Hypocrite_ ," he interrupts with a sneer. "You loathe the Aesir, you think little of Midgardians--but you claim to care for me? I'm no more a full-blooded Jotnar than you. I should **sicken** you."

"You're my brother," Thor answers; and Loki is silent.

"So are Helblindi and Byleist," he replies at last. "They're proper jotun. Why don't you seek their company instead?"

Thor's grip tightens, because Loki is just being stubborn now. "They're not _you_ ," he growls. "You don't sicken me, Loki. I could no more hate you than myself."

A long time passes before Loki speaks again; but at last his brother lets out a breath, slowly.

"Good," he whispers, and touches Thor's cheek. "Show me how sorry you are."

Loki drapes his cloak over Thor's head and shoulders as he pulls aside his loincloth. When he kisses the inside of Loki's thigh, his brother leans against the wall and cups the back of his neck.

"What would we be," Loki murmurs, a hitch in his voice, rubbing his thumb against Thor's nape, "were you not touch-starved all your life?"

He's unsure what Loki's asking with the question, since the answer is obvious: they would be brothers.

But Loki doesn't seem to wish a response anyway, for a moment later he slides his hand up and grips Thor's hair, dragging him to where he wants Thor's mouth to be.

Loki thinks of this as dominance, he knows; it's an act his brother never reciprocates. Thor doesn't like being looked down on--but he does like the sounds he can wring from Loki like this, how he's found ways to make his brother shudder and reach to him for support.

Here like this, with the fur lining of the cloak at his back and the slow-growing warmth of his brother against his front, Thor feels the constant chill of their home slip away. With Loki's hands on his shoulders, Loki's hips against his palms, Thor feels almost more comfortable in his skin than anywhere else, except on the battlefield with Mjolnir in his grip. Here like this it doesn't matter if or why he can't touch anyone else; here like this, he doesn't want to.

Loki swallows another groan as he digs his nails into Thor's shoulders and rocks forward harder, his pace growing more demanding with each heartbeat, each press of Thor's tongue. Thor rubs his hands against Loki's hips, urging him along, trying to guide him closer to his release; and finally Loki goes. He offers no warning; he never does.

Thor half-chokes, then adjusts and begins to swallow. He splays his hands on Loki's thighs to feel the tremors there, and when Loki begins to grow soft in his mouth, Thor moves forward, presses his forehead against his brother's stomach and continues to suck until Loki whimpers and pushes at him. 

Thor drags himself back reluctantly, but the soft sound Loki makes when released is worth it. He rises to his feet and presses heavily against his brother, needy and wanting and tired of waiting.

Loki puts a hand to his chest and tries to push him away. "Someone may come by."

"You cared less a moment ago," Thor mutters. "Come back to our room."

"I have things to finish," Loki says, still pushing.

Thor pushes back harder, trapping his brother against the wall, and grips the hand on his chest tight to keep it there. "Come back now," he growls.

Loki glares at him through narrowed eyes, for one heartbeat, another, too long, and Thor recognizes the old readiness to fight.

He kisses Loki hard, enough to distract him, grabs his other wrist and fixes it to the wall. When he's sure Loki can't use his magic or create a clone to attack him from behind, Thor softens the kiss and rocks in between his brother's thighs. Loki bites his lip.

Thor pulls back and presses his forehead against his brother's, not noticing that he's pinned Loki's head to the wall with the gesture. He rolls his hips against him once more, slow and insistent, and Loki shivers.

"Come back," Thor says. "Please."

Loki closes his eyes.

Thor waits for an answer. When none comes, he makes himself push away; but he keeps his hand around Loki's. When he pulls, Loki leaves the wall and follows him.

Thor goes through the door to their room first, and Loki runs his hands down his back almost as soon as he's entered, kicking the door shut behind him. Thor draws a breath at the unusual gesture and turns around; Loki pushes him against the wall and slides his hands beneath Thor's loincloth before he can speak.

He arches into the touch and wraps his arms tight around Loki, pulling him close. His brother gripes at the way the angle strains his wrists, but he doesn't try to pull away and he doesn't bite. He mouths Thor's chest instead, soft open-mouthed kisses that he almost never gives except in his most generous moods.

Thor comes long before they take a step closer toward a bed. He's still slumped against the wall when he even thinks of one; Loki shakes free of his slackened embrace, and a moment later presses two sticky fingers to Thor's mouth.

When he pushes, Thor parts his lips and lets Loki slide them inside. He runs his tongue along his brother's fingers, cleaning them off, because there's not much difference between the taste of his seed and the taste of Loki's, and Thor likes the way Loki's fingertips feel against his tongue and the way Loki's eyes are slightly wide as he watches him.

Loki curls his fingers a heartbeat later, pressing them against the back of his teeth.

"Since you made me abandon my studies," his brother says, and tugs, "you might as well make it worth my while."

Thor bites his fingers, but not hard; and when Loki tugs again, pulling him toward his own bed--because it's always Thor's bed, Loki has never welcomed him in his own since that first night--Thor goes.  
  
  
Loki thinks of this as dominance, he knows; he thinks that whenever Thor takes him in his mouth he's won something that Thor has lost. It aggravates him--it riles his pride. But most of the time he can tamp it down. Only when Loki's gloating takes a nasty turn does it overcome him.

Thor doesn't think he loses when he sucks off his brother. When he does, Loki is too preoccupied to slap at his hands when Thor touches him; and the better he grows at it, the longer Loki lies sated afterward, allowing Thor to be as close to him as he wishes. Loki never gives himself over as much as he does when he thinks Thor is giving in to him.

He wonders sometimes if this is what it's like to think like a trickster: to do something for his own reasons while knowing others will see it differently.

He doesn't know how Loki can enjoy it so much. Even this one thing is frustrating, is tedious; to have as many different motivations and reasons as Loki does seems exhausting.

In the bed, Loki rolls his shoulders and makes an aggravated noise, and pushes lazily at the hand Thor is running along his side. Thor recognizes the gestures and tightens his grip, throwing his leg over Loki's to pin him down, to buy a little more time before Loki starts to squirm and shove and hit.  
  
  
He wakes up later that night to find himself alone. Loki has returned to his own bed and curled up in his own blankets, sleeping with his back to him.

Thor stares at his brother across the gap between their beds, narrow and vast, and wonders how things have turned so rancid between them.  
  
  
  
  
Thor slowly gathers a group of giants who respect his authority enough to follow him into battle, even if the jokes about his size never fully disappear. He's sent on more and more raids, into Midgard, Vanaheim and Alfheim, rare excursions into Nidavellir and Svartalfheim; the only place his father does not send him is into Asgard. Thor gathers that a fragile truce has been built between the Aesir and the Jotnar, though he doesn't know the details; it occurred while he was gone. His elder brothers were present at the crafting of the treaties, of course, but Thor--a third son, an illegitimate if acknowledged son, long declared never to be considered for kingship by the Casket of Winters--was not invited. He serves the kingdom as a warrior only.

He assumes it's the same for Loki, until his brother mentions a detail while Thor is describing his latest venture into Vanaheim.

"I hope you took all you wanted," Loki says, running his fingers over the wall of the corridor they stand in. Snow dusts their stoles; a storm is coming in. "It'll be the last one."

Thor frowns. "Why?"

"Frey convinced Odin to petition for a respect for Vanaheim's borders at the peace-oaths," Loki replies.

Thor stares at his brother's back as he murmurs runes and traces his fingertips over the mortar between the stones, and thinks of the way Loki carelessly touched the Casket long ago, without harm or ill-effect.

It's easy for his brother to talk of them not being full-blooded Jotnar; despite his runtish stature, Loki still has all the blood's advantages.

"You were there as well?" Thor finally mutters. "So only I was not invited?"

"I didn't say I was invited," Loki replies. "I just went anyway."

Thor blinks, and then thinks of all Loki's hidden pathways and huffs. "You'll get caught one of these days."

"That's always the risk," he agrees.

Thor shakes his head. "Why do you do these things?"

"To learn," his brother answers. "And the days would be tedious if they spun out without a knot or a tangle among them. I don't know how you endure it."

Thor makes a face and pulls his stole tighter around his neck as another gust of wind blasts down the corridor. "Battle is just as enjoyable as tricks. What **are** you doing?"

"This way's been locked since the Aesir came," Loki says.

Thor frowns again, deeper, and presses his hand to the wall. But he feels only cold stone beneath his palm, and soon pulls it back. "One of them did that?"

"Presumably," Loki murmurs. "But who and why, I wonder?"

Thor scowls. "It's a trap. Have you told Father?"

"Of course," Loki says easily. "He said it was nothing of import."

"They were laying spells in our hall at the same time they swore a treaty!"

"It's only a shortcut between here and the main hall," Loki tells him calmly. "If it doesn't vex Laufey, it shouldn't bother you, either."

Thor grumbles and shifts closer to his brother as a new gust of wind brings snow with it. "Why are we even accepting peace with them, anyway? They only survived the war by Father's generosity."

"It isn't that simple," his brother replies. "Odin's rebuilt Hlidskialf."

Thor frowns. "What's that?"

"Your education is shameful," Loki mutters. "It's the All-father's great tower, the one that lets him to see into all the Nine Realms. Laufey tore it down in the war; but stones can be rebuilt." Loki rests a hand on the wall, a frown making it clear he's annoyed with the interruptions. "He should have seen that much," he adds.

Thor's expression darkens. "Why did Father allow that? We should have ridden out against--"

"You need to stop this talk," Loki interrupts. "If Laufey could have stopped him, he would have. When you rail against his apparent lack of action, you are pointing out his weakness. If it ever reaches ears beyond my own, he will not look kindly on you for it."

Thor straightens.

"...Are you saying the Aesir are stronger?" he asks carefully, trying to give Loki a way out from his apparently treasonous words.

"I am saying the Jotnar were strong enough to beat them," his brother replies, "but not eradicate them." The corner of Loki's mouth curls briefly as he taps his fingers against the stones. "Odin knows who Odin's killer will be; and it is apparently not the King of Jotunheim."

"Stop speaking dangerously," Thor warns.

Loki gives him a sidelong look. "Generosity is just another word for insufficient power. This 'peace' allows us to save face, and the Aesir to not lose any more of their number. You don't have to like it, just hold your tongue."

Thor yanks his stole closer and twists his fingers in the fur, angry but unsure what to do about it.

"Kin-killers and flawed off-shoots," he mutters. "They aren't better than us."

"This from the half-jotun who's nearly killed two brothers already," Loki comments, and Thor jerks away from him.

Loki turns from the wall and holds up a hand. "Peace," he says, looking Thor in the eyes, for he knows when he goes too far. "I didn't mean it."

Thor doesn't answer, and a moment later Loki lays a palm over his shaking fist. "You do need to stop complaining about their continued existence," he continues, softer. "Laufey has his reasons. To question them is to question the king. You are not a beloved son, Thor. Hold your tongue."

Thor squeezes his fist and clenches his jaw; but Loki's words ring true.

But then, they often do.

"Fine," he grits out. Loki lets out a breath and then pats his fist once, before turning back to the wall.

His brother tangles with the spell for a time longer, and at last draws his hands away with a smile. He knocks deliberately on the stones, three times, and then drops his hand to his side and turns away.

"Let's go," Loki says. "It's freezing."

Thor looks over his shoulder at the wall as they leave; but the stones remain mere stones.  
  
  
Thor is sent on more and more raids, and consequently is gone from Utgard more and more often. Some time passes before he realizes Loki has begun disappearing at night.

At first he thinks Loki is staying up late studying something that's finally interested him; and then he thinks his brother is avoiding him again; and then he thinks Loki is off on another apprenticeship with some new sorceress their father has found; and finally he exhausts all possibilities and realizes Loki is just not to be found in that stretch of time after dinner and before dawn.

He tries to track his brother, but doesn't ask around Utgard about him. Too often he's gotten Loki in trouble with his assumptions.

One evening he manages to catch Loki before he leaves the dining hall and walks beside him down the corridor, elbow brushing his brother's side. Loki shifts away, with Thor following, until he's crowded against the wall; and then he gives up.

"What do you want?" he asks, annoyed.

"Where have you been?" Thor responds, since the corridor is empty at the moment save for them. The servants are clearing the table, and the rest of their family has gone to the great room.

"In the dining hall," Loki says, and Thor gives him an irritated look.

"You know what I mean," he replies. "You've been gone nights."

Loki is silent for a moment, and then shrugs a shoulder. "You're often on raids these days, brother. Perhaps we've just missed each other."

"Don't lie to me," Thor says lowly. Loki gives him a long look from the corner of his eye.

"What exceptions you demand," his brother replies, and then says, "I've been out wandering."

Thor frowns. "Where?"

Loki shrugs again. "Nowhere in particular. Around the land."

"Hunting?"

"Sometimes," Loki answers. "Why does it concern you?"

"I missed you," he says.

Loki gives him another long look, and then shakes his head.

"Come with me next time, then," his brother says a moment later. "I'll go hunting tomorrow. Or do you have to ride out again?"

"Not yet. I can join you." Thor pauses, and then asks, "So you'll be here tonight?"

Loki gives the wall on one side, then him on the other, a wry look, and says, "Does it look like I could be going anywhere?"

Of course he could; Loki always seems able to slip out of his reach. But Thor doesn't want to encourage him, so he doesn't say so. "Good."  
  
  
  
  
Loki slings himself onto his horse as Thor finishes strapping the last pack to his own, and then they leave the stables, Loki riding and Thor leading his steed alongside on foot.

"You really should consider a chariot," Loki tells him.

Thor shrugs. "What's the hurry?" he asks.

What he does not say is that Laufey rarely lets him keep any spoils of worth from his raids. Save what he hides away for Loki, Thor's portions are always basic goods: firewood, furs, that chair, hides or bolts of cloth; rarely gold or jewels, weapons or metal. And he's always expected to share his rewards with Loki, who's hardly ever on the battlefield with him since Laufey doesn't trust his youngest to be too far from his reach. Thor never complains about this.

Loki does not understand how Thor bears Laufey's disregard so well; it's a loyalty the basis of which he cannot comprehend.

"This from you," he says with a small smile.

"What?" Thor replies. "You make it sound like I'm always in a rush."

"Of course not," Loki answers. "You are always one for a moment of peace and contemplation, and I only ever speak the truth."

Thor laughs.

"Why haven't we done this for so long?" he asks, as they pass out of Utgard's gates.

"We bear more responsibilities now," Loki replies with a lift of a shoulder. "Hunting is for boys and those with no other duties."

"We're drifting apart," Thor says quietly.

Loki blinks.

He rubs his thumb along the reins, and finally shrugs again.

"Inevitable," he says. "Brothers do that."

"Why?" Thor demands, because such is his nature: he does not let the things he wants go easily.

"The nemesis of martial deeds has always been treachery," Loki answers. "How could we end any other way?"

Thor makes a disgusted noise.

"There's a difference between tricks and treachery," Thor tells him, talking down as if he were speaking foolishly; and Loki thinks of the pathway he reopened in that corridor that now leads to a very different place, inhabited with very different creatures from the Jotnar, and does not directly answer.

"It depends on how you see things," he says instead. "Others lack a distinction."

"You could stop making so many enemies," Thor suggests dryly. "That might help."

"It could," Loki agrees, which is in no way a promise to change. Thor knows as much, and shakes his head.

"Then you'll just need to outweigh the tricks with glory," he concludes. "Join me on my next raid."

Loki glances skyward. "Why are you so keen to get me to join you in battle?" he replies. "Your methods have no place for magic."

"You're happier outside of Utgard," Thor says simply.

Loki glances over sharply. When Thor notices, he smiles reflexively; and then he blinks at the look on Loki's face. Loki makes himself half-smile in response, because Thor's words are honest and his intent sincere, though the gesture darts too quickly over his face to be truly effective and he soon turns forward again.

Thor's words are honest, his intent is sincere; it isn't a trap. Loki shifts the reins in his hands to a position better suited to cast magic and does not glance at the hammer hanging by Thor's thigh, and reminds himself of that. It is not a trap.

He cannot comprehend the reason for Thor's loyalty to Laufey, but it exists. He's long ago learned to watch his words when talking to him; Thor lets him speak out to a certain extent, far further than he would endure from anyone else--but he always cuts Loki off sooner or later with suspicious frowns and warnings about dangerous talk.

The frowns soon disappear with a change in subject, and Thor unknowingly speaks more than his share of dangerous talk himself; but these do not mean he's an ally. Each day Loki walks an ever finer line between his frustration and the fact that it isn't shared by his closest confidante, and feels it shred his affection, unraveling it one thread at a time.

"Perhaps," is all he says at last.  
  
  
He leads Thor to an area nearly a day's ride from Utgard, beside a river choked with ice floes. A small copse of trees nearby houses hares and a few deer. There was a family of boars in it once too; but Loki captured most of them, grilling the meat and making stews while Angrboda was bedridden and bleeding after giving birth. The ones that survived were soon fed raw to his sons, until they grew big enough to hunt for themselves.

Loki ties the horses to the tree nearest the water, and makes a half-shelter for them against the snow while Thor pitches their tent by the small bulge in the river where it forms a demi-pool and the current runs slower.

"How did you find this place?" Thor asks when he returns, giving the spot an appreciative look.

"I come to a cave near here sometimes," Loki answers.

"Really?" Thor looks up at the mountains on the other side of the river. "Where? Is it interesting?"

"Some. But there was an avalanche not long ago; it can't be reached right now," he lies.

"Ah," Thor says, and the subject slips from the conversation.

They catch a young buck before the sun sinks behind the mountains. Thor smashes large branches off of the trees and starts a fire while Loki skins and cleans it. They discuss hunting plans for tomorrow as they eat; when the meal is finished and the sun has fled, leaving the moon to start his course, Loki stands.

"I'm going to wash off the rest of the blood," he says.

Thor looks at the ice floes in the river, and then back at him.

"I can heat it," he replies in amusement.

"I hope so," Thor says. "I'm not fishing you out if you turn into a block of ice."

"My heart breaks, brother." Loki takes a step away from the fire, then glances over his shoulder. "Are you joining me?"

Thor looks up again, expression warming at just those words; and Loki feels a thrill of satisfaction go up his spine. He knows he is the only choice Thor has in this place, but it still pleases him that Thor is so receptive to the fact: Thor desires him back, is not just using him in lieu of some jotun he craves more.

Then Thor half-frowns and looks at the pool again.

"How hot?" he asks, and Loki has to laugh.  
  
  
He gives the spell time to take, watching steam rise into the air and the floes melt partway as they drift past. When it seems ready, he dips a hand in the pool and gestures for Thor--stocking up more branches away from the fire--to come over.

"Will this suit you?" Loki asks with a smirk, just to see Thor make an annoyed face at him before crouching on the riverbank. Thor touches the water's surface with the same hesitation he approaches all new things--a consequence of that streak of fragility in him; so much here can harm him easily--and then plunges his hand in.

"Impressive," he says admiringly. Loki smiles and kisses his neck.

Thor makes a contented noise and closes his eyes. Loki's smile widens, and then he reaches out and undoes the leather thongs fastening Thor's stole. He kisses his throat again before sliding a hand down to hook his fingers in the edge of Thor's loincloth. "You'll have to undress before you get in," he grins.

Thor grips the back of his neck and turns to kiss him properly. Loki chuckles against his lips and leaves the cloth for the moment, moving to undo Thor's boots instead.

Thor is always easy to undress; he wears no gold or metal or other adornments, only fur and cloth and leather, all bound by simple cords. When Thor shifts and shivers after Loki tosses his loincloth aside, Loki presses a hand to his chest and pushes him toward the water. "Get in before you freeze."

He goes, sinking in with a deep, pleased noise that curls in Loki's belly. He begins to undo his boots as he watches Thor stretch out in the hot water, and has one off by the time Thor glides back to the bank with a wide grin.

"What do you think of my tricks now?" Loki asks, quirking an eyebrow.

"Magic is far better than battle," Thor replies, deadpan. "I take back all I ever said otherwise. Now come here."

Snickering, Loki does so.

Thor hisses when his wet hand touches the cold brass of his belt, but he works it loose regardless. Loki does him a favor and unfastens the clasp of his stole himself.

When his clothes and boots lie abandoned on the frozen grass--he leaves his ring and armbands and chain on, knowing as he does that he'll regret it as soon as he's out of the water--Loki slips into the pool only to immediately be caught by Thor, who grips his waist and presses him against the bank. Loki lets his head drop onto the grass, shivering at the contrast between it and the water, and says, "This is not conducive to washing."

Thor kisses him quiet and makes a half-hearted scrubbing motion at the patch of dried blood on his forearm that Loki would mock if he were able, and then abandons even that paltry effort to press closer.

Loki's breath hitches as Thor's hand closes around his half-hard cock. He tangles his fingers in the strands of Thor's hair floating on the water, cupping a hand over his shoulder as Thor strokes him to fullness. Loki presses his head harder against the grass and closes his eyes, sinking into the sensations of warmth and pleasure, half-buoyant in the water with his thighs tight against Thor's as he arches into the touch. Thor braces an arm against the bank beside him and Loki grips his bicep for support, trying to find a solid foothold as he pushes toward release.

It comes easily, here in this heat and his brother's well-known hands; Loki trembles and his grip tightens as his feet slip amid the mud and rocks when he comes. Thor slings an arm under his thigh and supports him easily, mouthing one of the knots beneath his collarbone as Loki rides his orgasm out.

Once he goes lax in the aftermath, Thor uses the hold on his leg to pull in tight, rocking between his thighs. Loki gasps at the pressure to his still-sensitive cock, and slides the hand on Thor's shoulder down to his chest. "Let go," he mumbles.

Thor does the opposite, pushing him up against the embankment and growling. The sound rumbles against Loki's chest. "No."

Loki manages to get his footing on one side and uses his grip on Thor's arm to make up for lack of it on the other. "Just for a bit," he says, and then slips his hand down further and brushes it over Thor's cock, fingertips barely touching. Thor groans and rocks into the touch, and Loki pulls back. "Just to the tent. I'll make the short walk worth such effort," he promises, grinning.

Thor leans back just enough to glare at him; he never takes a joke well when eager and thwarted. Loki can feel the raw want in the tension of his body, muscles taut and barely restrained, and adds, "Or I could let the water go cold."

Thor growls again, deeper and more aggravated, and slings him up onto the grass. Loki curses when the frozen ground hits his ass, and kicks water at Thor as he hauls himself out.

They drag their clothes back with them, tossing everything into the nearest corner of the tent. Loki rummages in his pack and palms a small vial, then tosses another branch on the fire, shuddering as the wind chills his wet jewelry. Thor throws one of the largest furs about himself, shaking from the cold as well, and then wraps it around Loki, tugging him close and pulling him deeper into the tent.

Loki goes willingly, happy to stand in the warmth, to loop his arms around Thor's waist and writhe teasingly against him, to hear Thor moan and feel his grip tighten as he pushes against him, seeking more friction. Loki kisses him and Thor responds hungrily.

When his jewelry is no longer cold against his skin, Loki pulls back as much as he's able and presses his hands against Thor's chest, urging him down onto the pile of furs taking up most of the small space. Thor goes, hauling Loki on top of him as he does. He drops the vial unnoticed beside them as he settles himself; Thor drapes the fur over Loki's shoulders and then cups his neck and pulls him down into another kiss.

He may have meant it guilelessly, but it leaves Loki splayed out atop him, off balance with a thick thigh between his legs, reminded yet again that for all his magic Thor is stronger than him.

He presses a hand to the fur they lie on and reaches out, sensing the frozen tundra below. Thor has no power to manipulate ice; Loki brought him to a place surrounded by it for that very reason. There's enough here that even Thor's lightning and rain can't wash it all away quickly. He can control this.

He bites Thor's bottom lip--gently, to show he isn't fighting--and pushes back against his hand. Thor releases his neck and breaks the kiss, dropping his head to nip at the skin along Loki's throat and shoulder. He takes a slow breath and reaches for the vial.

He didn't predict what a nuisance it would be to open one-handed. But he manages, spills some on his fingers and a little more on the furs, then jabs the cap back in. Thor is still kissing his collarbones, and he's glad; he doesn't want to be looked at until he's settled into this.

He has to shift to get the right angle, and Thor groans at his wriggling, wrapping those heavy arms around his back and pulling him down tight against his chest. Loki jerks his arm, trying to work it free--the oil is dripping from his fingers, a little more being lost with each delay, and he needs it all. It's been a long time since he last took Thor in, and his cock has grown fatter since then as Thor continues to outstrip him in size.

"I need my arm, brother," he murmurs, sounding amused. "Release it."

Thor grumbles against his neck, but loosens his grip long enough to for Loki to pull free. He seizes the chance to move again, canting his hips up before Thor's arm comes back down to pin him. Loki shifts his shoulders under the weight and presses a finger against his hole.

The oil has been heating slightly on his fingers, just as he made it to do--but it quickly flares hotter as he pushes in. Loki realizes abruptly that he should have tested it earlier, and bites his lip as he works the rest of the way in.

He manages that well enough, but can't suppress a shudder as he pulls back out. The heat is sharper than he expected, more focused and biting than the water was; it's leaving him more sensitive than he was prepared for.

Thor lifts his head from his shoulder, shifting a hand to touch his elbow. "Loki?"

It's too soon, he thinks, pressing his forehead to Thor's chest as he trails a hand down his forearm. Too soon. He wasn't ready to be seen yet.

Thor's hand reaches his own, slides lower to feel Loki's finger still halfway inside him, and then Thor draws in a sharp breath.

Loki lifts his head with a grin and pushes back in, unable to help the way his body twitches when he does. "Move your hand. It's in the way."

"Loki," Thor says, more a guttural groan than a word. " _Loki_."

"Move your hand."

Thor does, cupping his ass instead. He touches Loki's cheek with his other hand, still staring at him.

Loki takes advantage of the new freedom. He withdraws his finger with another shiver, then throws his leg over Thor's thigh before shifting onto his knees, the fur slipping off his shoulders. He squirms, trying to find the most comfortable position to do this, and Thor moves a hand to his hip to brace him.

Loki closes his eyes and pushes in, rocking back as he does. Thor's hand tightens when he shudders and he rolls his hips up unconsciously beneath him, his prick dragging across Loki's thigh with the motion, leaving a smear of precome.

Loki leans his cheek heavily into Thor's palm as he slowly fucks himself open. He has to bite his lip again when he adds a second finger, and Thor rubs a thumb soothingly against his hip even though he's panting beneath him, jerking his hips in time to the way Loki pushes his own.

Loki stills his fingers inside himself and kisses Thor's palm. He uses it as a brace as he leans over to grab the vial, then turns enough to meet Thor's eyes. Loki smirks when he brushes aside Thor's hand and presses the vial into it.

"Slick yourself up for me, Thor," he says, and palms the underside of his cock. "Make it so I can slide down in one thrust."

Thor groans and arches against him, and then moves to obey. He opens the vial clumsily, spilling some of the oil on his stomach as well as his hand; Loki manages not to sigh.

Thor's barely touched himself before he gasps. Loki's smirk deepens as he looks up, eyes wide: "What is this?"

"A present," Loki says, and then pulls his fingers out and leans down to brush his lips against Thor's. "For my brother who hates the cold so."

Thor kisses him back sloppily, his attention clearly focused elsewhere. Loki chuckles and draws back, sliding his fingers through the oil on Thor's stomach. While Thor is distracted, eyes half-closed as his hand works on his cock, Loki sinks his fingers as deep inside himself as he can and then spreads them open.

He doesn't bite down his hiss fast enough, and Thor blinks his eyes open. He slides the hand on Loki's hip back, moaning when his fingers brush the gap. Loki shudders.

"Please," Thor says roughly. "Loki, please. Don't keep me waiting."

"Patience," he replies. "Move your hand."

Thor does, finally, after a too-long pause that leaves Loki's stomach tight with expectation. He hisses again when Thor grips his cock, and sucks his lip into his teeth as he strokes, the heated oil sinking in fast and brutal.

Loki fucks back on his fingers harder, trying to adjust to the heat and the stretch, knowing they aren't enough preparation. He spreads them again, wider this time, and holds them like that until his legs tremble from it.

Thor releases his cock, making him gasp, and grips his thighs instead. He drags Loki down on top him, his prick rubbing against Loki's own as he jerks his hips up. "Loki, **please** \--"

"Patience," he repeats, swallowing. "Soon."

Thor groans and pulls him forward. Loki inhales sharply as Thor's cock drags against his balls and the skin past them, and then shivers as it comes up against his ass. Thor rolls his hips again, and the thick head brushes Loki's hand where he's holding himself open.

"--I forget patience isn't a particular skill of yours," he mutters, and then takes a deep breath and pulls his fingers out slowly, still apart. It leaves him shaking--but he's running out of time. He's teased Thor too long, worked him up too much; Thor will pull him down on his cock soon enough if he doesn't take it first. Loki reaches back for it, gripping the shaft as he shifts around to align himself. Thor trembles once when Loki presses down against the head, and then holds still under him.

Loki braces his hands against Thor's chest and takes him in gradually, bit by bit, rocking his hips to find the best angle. He has to choke down the urge to whimper the farther he goes; it's slick enough, but the heat of the oil magnifies that of Thor's cock until Loki thinks this was not the best idea he's ever had.

Thor settles his hands on his hips, thumbs resting on the ridges running up Loki's sides. The oil leaves the sensation lopsided: one agreeable, one too hot. "Easy, Loki," he murmurs. "Relax more, then it'll go better."

Loki thinks Thor can talk about relaxing when Thor's being fucked with his own cock, and then thinks that **that** would be an interesting illusion, but says neither and instead snorts. "Just a moment ago you were begging me to hurry."

"I don't want to hurt you," Thor says, shaking his head slightly.

A lie, Loki thinks, the kind that turns Thor's blunt honesty to hypocrisy; but he doesn't call Thor on it when he's like this, spread and speared and vulnerable. Instead he grins and tilts his head, and pushes further down.

Thor groans and grips tighter, thrusting up reflexively. Loki hisses as his cock stretches him wider, and doesn't speak until he's sure his voice is under his control again.

"Hurt me?" he asks. "This is only a _small_ discomfort, brother."

Thor growls under him, but doesn't rise to the bait. "Go easy, Loki. It will feel better."

Loki brushes a hand over Thor's face. "You would know," he says kindly, "with all the times you've taken my cock in you." Loki leans further over him, sliding up as he does, and Thor draws a long breath. "Here is your chance, brother. We are reversed--and yet you tell me to go _easy?_ "

Loki pushes back sharply, digging his fingers into Thor's chest as he forces himself down all the way, and Thor moans and thrusts into him. Loki has to take a moment to get his voice back before he speaks again, and it still comes out shakier than he wishes. "Enough with that stupid nobility. Fuck me the way you imagine doing."

"I am trying," Thor says tightly.

Loki exhales through his teeth and slides up again, leaning over Thor to hiss in his ear. "Fine, then. Fuck me the way I **expect**."

"Do you want it to hurt?" Thor asks, sounding confused; and Loki shudders.

When he shoves back this time, Thor tightens his grasp and pulls him down hard. Loki nearly bites through his lip to hold in his shout.

Thor uses his grip to restrain him, forcing Loki to use all his strength to move until he finally doesn't have enough left to keep the pace. He curses when his legs give out and drags his nails down Thor's chest, bracing his hands hard against the marks as blood starts to well. Thor hisses and lifts a hand at that, but only cups it around Loki's neck.

"That's better," he breathes, and rolls his hips up slowly. Loki shivers again and closes his eyes, and then slides his palms off Thor's chest and down to the fur beneath them.

He clenches it in his fists as Thor takes him gently, moving with steady, easy thrusts even as his body trembles beneath Loki's with the urge to go faster and seize more.

Loki wishes he would. Thor's moods are mercurial, not even hypocritical because so shifting; he cannot hold two opposing desires for long before the stronger overwhelms. Loki would rather Thor just give in now instead of trying to resist--all his efforts to be generous do is leave Loki on edge, waiting for the storm to burst.

He fights the hold on his hip and neck again, trying to urge Thor faster; but in a contest of raw strength Thor will always beat him, and Loki at last has to yield. It takes some time before he realizes he's making needy, keening noises with each thrust, and some more before he's able to try and stop--and then Thor grips his cock again and Loki gives up on that as well and throws himself into the bright, biting heat, driving toward the pleasure behind it as best he can while Thor murmurs encouragement. Soon Thor slides his hand down from his neck and lays it against the small of his back, pressing him forward; Loki groans at the new angle and shoves hard against it, and feels his release crack over him at the thickness and the heat and his brother's sharp gasp.

Loki's arms go taut as he holds himself up, first shuddering through his orgasm and then trying to get his breath back. Thor thrusts shallowly a few times, struggling toward his own release but thwarted by the angle; and then he groans desperately and surges up.

Loki gasps as Thor rolls them over and pins him to the furs. He shouts and digs his fingers into Thor's shoulders, drawing blood; it doesn't even register. Thor grabs the back of his thigh and forces his leg up, bending him to the way he wants, and the next deep thrust makes Loki arch up with a cry he never would have made willingly.

Thor braces a forearm by his head, and Loki grabs a handful of the hair that's fallen in his face. Thor grunts when he wrenches it, but that's all.

"Please," Thor begs with each thrust, "please, Loki, almost...."

Loki yanks his hair once more and then drops his head against the fur. He lets his hand fall to his side, and Thor soon takes it, twining their fingers before his next thrust.

Loki presses his head back harder and tries to feel the ice below him. His palm burns where Thor holds it; his skin still flares hot where Thor's hands have been; Thor's cock within him is becoming more heat than he can endure. He feels like he's been flung into the depths of Muspelheim, or else struck by lightning, blazing down to leave only charred remains.

"Thor," he chokes out in a moan. "Hurry. I--" and Loki manages to stop himself before he says what he shouldn't, before he gives Thor knowledge he doesn't want him to have.

"Yes," Thor growls, moving over him, holding him pinned and twisted, "yes, Loki."

Loki is slack beneath him, shuddering as Thor pushes toward his release, unable to hold back his gasps, unable to speak long enough to turn this back into his power, unable to find his voice at all except to strangle a whine as Thor thrusts hard one last time and then finally spills with a deep groan, searing Loki from the inside out.

Loki chokes again when Thor collapses on top of him a few moments later, stripping away what little ability to move he had. He punches him with his free arm.

Thor squeezes his palm, and the hand that had loosened around his thigh tightens to pull him closer. Loki knows this, knows how this always goes: Thor will hold him down, trap him beneath him for as long as he can no matter what he says or does. Thor's cock is still inside him, molten even as it softens, the seed that trickles out etching scorching lines down his ass and thigh; his skin roasts everywhere that Thor's touched him, and he can't, he can't bear it any longer.

He claws Thor's throat, kicks at him with his heels and whimpers when it jostles his cock within him. Loki snarls "Get _off_ " in a voice that cracks halfway through.

Thor pushes up. Loki half-sobs as he pulls out, and shakes when cooler air touches his skin.

He shoves away and barely catches a glimpse of Thor's face--staring, confused, unsure--as he staggers to his feet.

Loki looks down at himself as he passes the fire on his way out the tent. His skin is smeared with pale streaks, handprints and stripes and dots from fingertips. Behind him, he hears Thor suck in a breath.

Loki makes his way to the pool. He casts no warming spell on it this time, and stifles a cry as he plunges into the cold water. The shock of the change leaves him lightheaded, but Loki ignores it and pushes himself deeper. He'd sink below the water if he wasn't afraid of blacking out.

Thor soon comes up, wrapped in one of the furs, and kneels beside him. He starts to reach out to touch Loki, but then hesitates and stops.

"I didn't realize," he whispers.

 _Because you didn't wish to_ , Loki thinks but does not say; there's no point. Thor will no more change than he himself ever shall.

In the wake of his silence Thor reaches for him again, and again stops himself. He stares into the water instead, where the moon casts just enough light to show that the patches on Loki's skin are slowly fading back to blue.

"Am I cursed?" Thor asks, and his voice is so shaken that Loki cannot help but sigh.

"Maybe," he replies tiredly.

"Maybe we both are," he adds. Loki looks out at the water, at the snowdrifts and the mountains beyond it. "Maybe Laufey's line has grown flawed from whatever he laid with to create us."

Thor pulls the edges of the fur tighter. Loki glances over and sees he's shivering.

He exhales again, and then lifts a hand from the water and touches Thor's cheek. Loki tugs him closer until Thor's temple is resting against his own.

"Don't sit out here. You'll freeze." Loki turns his head and brushes his lips over Thor's chin. "Go build up the fire. I'll be cold when I come back."

Thor goes. Soon Loki can hear him pulling more wood from the pile.

He stays in the pool until his skin is all changed back, until all heat has been leeched from him and all his shaking is from the cold.  
  
  
He comes back to find Thor has built a second, smaller fire within the tent, near the entrance. Loki gives him a disbelieving look over the flames as he picks up one of the larger furs. "We'll suffocate."

"There's enough air," Thor says quietly. "I checked."

"If you say so," Loki replies dryly, and starts to settle on the opposite side.

A sharp stab along his leg and ass stop him from sitting. Loki stretches out instead, draping the fur over himself before propping his chin on his fist. He holds his other hand out to the fire, keeping it to the warmth for as long as possible before the pain makes him draw back.

When he examines his palm, it's still blue. Loki flexes his hand a few times, then folds it into a fist and lets it rest at his side.

A part of his mind is absently preoccupied with where the spells clashed, where his material one in the ingredients of the oil jarred against and overrode the intangible one Laufey's laid on Thor's skin; but the thoughts are disjointed, and he knows he won't work it out tonight. Tomorrow, another day, when his nerves are settled.

Loki focuses his gaze again and watches Thor feed another stick into the fire, making the flames rise. The light glints off the hammer slung among their things behind him in the tent's corner.

The hammer's name is Mjolnir.

Thor told him that, not long after he told Loki it speaks to him. Loki confirmed the name elsewhere, and then wondered how much longer he has before Thor realizes he lied about breaking the spell on it.

It's inevitable that he will. Loki knows secrets cannot be kept forever--they always come out in the end, and all that can be done is to manipulate when and how, to bring about the discovery in the way that serves him best. Eventually Thor will realize Loki has no ability to move the hammer, that he never has, and that he never will: Odin's spell is thick and tangled and vast, and Loki cannot imagine the circumstances that would leave him more powerful than the All-father, though he's tried. Eventually Thor will realize he possesses something which Loki, for all his magic, cannot make work for him. Eventually Thor will realize just how strong he is, and how easily he can take anything he wants.

Eventually.

All that holds the discovery back is Thor's refusal to see any similarity between himself and the Aesir, and Laufey's extensive efforts to keep him from wanting or being forced to. And those are too thin of defenses for Loki's taste.

"What happened?" Thor finally asks, and Loki's gaze shifts to him.

He shrugs a shoulder. "The spell backfired," he answers. "They do sometimes. Potions are women's work and not my greatest skill. I'll try something else next time."

"No," Thor says, shaking his head vehemently. "Don't ever make that again."

Loki curves his mouth in a half-smile. "You're taking this far too hard," he says. "It wasn't even you it happened to."

"Too **hard**?" Thor demands. He scowls disbelievingly at Loki, then jerks his gaze away and stares down at his palm. "I-- how can you take this so _calm?_ "

"It's happened before," Loki answers, and Thor gapes at him.

"What? When?!"

"That first time," Loki says quietly, folding his arm beneath his head and settling his temple into the crook of his elbow. "After you drifted off, I noticed it." When Thor only stares, Loki adds, "It never happened again, so I assumed it was a fluke."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Do you enjoy telling others you can't be touched?" Loki asks derisively. "Back then, why would I have believed you would tolerate sharing a room--let alone a bed--with me, if it became clear just where the other half of my blood comes from?"

"Why would you think that?" Thor says, sounding baffled.

Loki narrows his eyes.

"Have all those blows in the training field caught up to you?" he sneers. "Do you really not remember all the casual insults about the Aesir you've spat over the years?"

"You did too," Thor insists. "Them and Midgardians both."

Loki leaves aside the fact that Thor _still_ seems to believe he's half-human as a battle for another day, and retorts, "And then I **stopped**."

Thor makes a frustrated gesture. "Because you study magic!" he argues. "You said yourself, borders just change the form. Of course you look at things differently. But I've fought them, I've gone to the realm those kin-killers built--"

"Laufey's words," Loki interrupts cuttingly. "How surprising, how _unexpected_ , that they would be said so often to us, looking the way we do."

Thor scowls again, and Loki doesn't wait for his response. He closes his eyes instead, shutting down the conversation. It will only devolve into another argument, and he's weary of fights. He never wins against Thor.

It's not that he doesn't understand Thor's loathing of the Aesir. From a distance, Loki admires the way Laufey cultivated it so carefully in them both; he has a certain respect for the sheer delicacy and extensiveness of the training--though of course having seen through it, he thinks he could have done it better.

What angers him is that Thor still holds to it despite all Loki's efforts to push him to think otherwise, just because he cannot draw a distinction between his personal feelings and his perceived duties to the kingdom.

What angers him is that Thor clings to the teachings of a creature who's given him nothing, rather than listening to the only one who's ever shown him any fondness at all.

Each day Loki feels this frustration shred his affection, unraveling it one thread at a time, leaving behind a void in its stead; leaving him with nothing left to turn to in this bleak land.

He knows he would be better served not loving Thor. Nothing would tie him here then.  
  
  
Loki wakes later, when the fire's guttering. He dresses and leaves a clone behind in the tent, building the illusion carefully to make it last even in his absence, and then goes to the cave via the copse.

Loki steps between two trees and underneath a branch, and comes out through a cracked boulder beside the entrance to the cave only to find his daughter playing in the moonlight.

"Hel!" he snaps, and she darts to her feet.

She trips over them a moment later, and crashes down to the rock with a sound of shattering bone.

Loki goes over, shedding the appearance of his meager clothes for an illusion of more fitting ones, the gold and thick furs he could never get away with within Utgard, and examines her ankle.

It's broken again, unsurprisingly. The corpse half of her is terribly fragile, blackened exposed bones barely held together by rotted sinews, and it cracks and shatters easily. The only fortunate thing is that she seems to feel no pain on that side. Loki says "When will you learn to be careful?" and then gathers the stray bone shards in his palm and carries her into the cave.

Angrboda looks up from her spinning as he enters, stepping over a coil of Jormungand that lies across the entrance. "Another broken bone?" she asks wearily.

"I told you not to let them out," Loki says angrily.

Angrboda, crammed into a small area with her wheel and spindle and torch, gestures at the expanse of the cave, nearly filled with Jormungand's bulk. What space he doesn't take up, Fenris is stretched out in. "Soon I won't have a choice," she replies in irritation.

He sets Hel atop the nearest coil and begins to heal her ankle, reattaching the splintered bone as she bites her lip. Angrboda frowns at the careful way he moves.

"Are you injured?" she asks, leaving the spinning.

"It's nothing," Loki replies.

When he's finished he hands Hel back to her mother, and then frowns out at Fenris and Jormungand.

"Have they grown again?" he asks.

"Of course," Angrboda replies. "Do they ever stop?"

Loki's frown deepens as he stares at the wolf and serpent, crammed up against each other and the walls of the cave. The bed he crafted is pressed tight against one rock face, the wood creaking occasionally when Jormungand shifts; the spinning wheel practically sits in the cooking fire now.

At first he was delighted by these three: they were intriguing, fascinating. He fawned over Hel, taught Fenris to hunt, let Jormungand drape himself over his arms and back as he lay on the bed with Angrboda and told stories.

But then Odin rebuilt Hildskialf, and Loki grew ever more aware how difficult it was becoming to hide them. His negotiations are still in a delicate place: though his second armband is one of the rings fallen from Draupnir, given by Odin's own hand, Loki puts little faith in the significance of gifts. He knows what Odin is using him for, and that there are other, if harder, ways for the god to get what he wants; he can't afford to have the existence of these three known.

He pulls a bolt of brocade, charmed from a Midgard prince the last time he traveled there, from his pack and hands it over to Angrboda. "Here."

She examines the fabric in the torchlight with a surprised look. "Thank you," she says. "What's the occasion?"

"You'll need a new dress soon," Loki replies. "This can't go on forever. When they're discovered, you'd be wise to slip away and find someone willing to marry you."

Angrboda glares at him over the edge of the fabric.

"You are rotten through," she bites off.

Loki grins, sharp and wide. "My other children are normal," he says carelessly. "That suggests the monstrosity lies in you."

Angrboda looks ready to throw the brocade in the fire; but she's no fool, and stops herself. She tosses the bolt on the bed instead, turning her back to him.

Loki could coax her out of the snit, he knows; this is a familiar situation, and one he's more at ease with since he holds all the power. But he feels no real urge to do so, not while still sated from earlier--and the thought reminds him of Thor, sleeping on the other side of the river.

Loki picks his way over to Angrboda and kisses her neck briefly. "Farewell."

She turns, blinking, as he starts to make his way to the entrance. "You're leaving already?"

"Yes," Loki agrees.

"You never stay for more than a few hours anymore," she mutters.

He shrugs, settling the furs over his shoulders. "A prince has many responsibilities," Loki replies casually, and goes.

When he passes through the cracked boulder and comes out underneath a branch and between two trees, Loki lets the illusion fade, returning to his simple loincloth and worthless brass trinkets. He conceals the Draupnir-dropped armband under its usual brass glamour and thinks he should go see how Glut and their daughters are fairing. It's been a long time since he's thought of them; Einmyria and Eisa would be half-grown now, at the normal pace. He should check that they have food and clothes enough.

Then the tent comes into sight and Loki discards the idea as something for another day.

Thor is still asleep when he slips in. Loki dissolves the clone and stares down at him for a while, watching the easy rise and fall of his chest; and then he settles back into his furs on the other side of the guttered fire.  
  
  
He rouses later to a weight on his chest. Half-asleep, Loki thinks panickedly of Mjolnir and lashes out.

He clubs Thor in the face. He curled up beside Loki earlier in the night, and draped an arm over him the same way he has so many times before.

Loki doesn't apologize, but he does examine Thor's face for a few moments while his heartbeat calms before proclaiming that he's fine. Thor keeps scowling but doesn't grumble or complain.

Loki watches him for a few breaths, studying this surprisingly acquiescing version of Thor.

Then he settles back down on his side. "I've seen you take far worse in sparring matches," Loki says. "At least you're not frostbitten. Stop sulking and lie down."

Thor does, but gingerly. Loki would smirk at him for the over-caution if not for the fact that Thor isn't wary of being hit again, Thor is wary of _him_. Loki huffs and shifts closer before reaching up and tangling his fingers in the ends of Thor's hair. When Thor settles a little further into the furs, Loki rests his forehead against his chest and closes his eyes.

Thor touches his shoulder and asks, "Where were you?"

Loki keeps his eyes shut even as his heart starts to race again. He throws his mind back, trying to determine if Thor was awake after all when he left or returned--but no, he's sure he wasn't. He wouldn't have to be: Thor obviously woke at some later point, and Loki would have left traces of his departure, tracks that Thor--a skilled hunter--could easily notice.

"Nowhere," he answers, swallowing away the dryness in his throat. "I woke and took a walk, and then came back. You are too jealous of my time, brother."

Thor's hand is still light on him when he asks, "...Why didn't I change, too?"

Loki pauses for a moment, and then shrugs. "Different mothers, different afflictions," he answers. "That's what I always assumed. Go to sleep."

Thor remains still for a few heartbeats--but then he curls against Loki, lying too close and holding too tight, the same as he always has. Loki allows it. 

He knows he would be better served not loving Thor; nothing would tie him here then. And yet, he acknowledges, resting his forehead on Thor's chest and feeling it rise and fall, listening to the steady beat of Thor's heart within, and yet it is a step he cannot successfully take.

No matter how he tries.  
  
  
They return to Utgard with the hide, another stag, a sack of hares, and a net of salmon from the river. Loki ties the hide to his own horse, and loads the second one down with the salmon and hares. Thor carries the stag back on his shoulders.  
  
  
  
  
Thor returns from a raid on Midgard to learn that Loki is being punished again. No one will tell him why; no one speaks Loki's name without spitting it out.

There is a secret way into the lowest caverns of Utgard where Laufey keeps his prisoners. Loki showed it to him when they were children; when he was young, the Aesir still sometimes visited Jotunheim for matters of tribute, or discussion--Thor was never fully sure what, because before every visit he always seemed to offend their father and would end up locked away until the envoys were gone. Loki would slip down at nights and bribe the guards with wine and roasted meats to leave them for a time, and would give Thor delicacies from the feast-tables and tell him stories of the days' events, delighting in the captive audience to his tales of pranks played against the monstrous Aesir.

Thor swallowed the last of the mutton leg and wiped juice away from his mouth--their father always sent enough food when he was being punished here, but it was never as good as what Loki brought--and asked, "Are they really so ugly?"

"Repulsive," Loki insisted, taking a bite from a fruit the visitors had brought from Asgard. "They're grossly pale, like grubs."

Thor made a face and cracked open the bone to suck the marrow.

There is a secret way to the caverns; but Thor no longer fits it, and even if he did it's so twisting that he fears he would lose his way without Loki as a guide. So he goes down the known path and knocks the guards unconscious from behind.

"You could have bribed them," Loki says casually from his seat on the floor of his cell. "Those two wouldn't have cost much."

Thor stops in front of the prison and glares at it. This one is new, iron and ice and stone. They always seem to change when Loki is sent here. He lifts Mjolnir and prepares to smash the lock.

"Don't do that," Loki says tiredly. "It's magic, you fool."

Thor drops his arm but keeps glaring at the lock. "How long are you going to be in here?"

Loki half-shrugs a shoulder. There's the stain of a healing bruise along his jaw. "A few more days. Perhaps a week. We'll see."

"What did you do this time?"

"I'm flattered at your faith in my innocence," his brother says dryly.

Thor just looks at him.

Loki crosses his legs and readjusts his cloak about him. "Our father disapproved of my children."

When Thor says nothing, he eventually goes on. "The Aesir struck while you were gone. Apparently their fears grew even greater than their desire for peace. Or perhaps Odin knew he would get away with it. He even took Fenris back to Asgard, to try and turn him _tame_ , and Laufey let him." Loki smiles, slight and sharp. "It won't go as the All-father wishes. But then, perhaps he already knows that, too."

"You had children?" Thor says quietly.

"I still have them," Loki replies, smile gone. "They're just elsewhere now."

"How many?" he demands.

"Five," his brother says with a shrug, and Thor's stomach clenches. "It was the last three that concerned the Aesir."

Thor stands outside the prison that bars his brother from him, trembling, trying to find the words that match his feelings. None come readily to his tongue; all that rises is the urge to strike out--at Loki, at whoever he's bedded, at anyone who first comes within his reach.

"Are there any other secrets you have, Brother?" he finally asks bitterly.

"Many," Loki answers, "but I keep them to myself."

Thor tightens his grip around Mjolnir's handle until the leather bites into his palm. Loki tilts his head, watching him through the bars.

"Why are you so angry?" he asks.

"I thought you trusted me," Thor says shakily. "I thought we--" and then he stops, because he doesn't know how to say what he feels without it coming out in a way that leaves him even more raw and exposed than he already is.

Loki looks at him for a long time, and then lowers his head and sighs.

A moment later, he stands.

"You asked how long I'm to be in here?" his brother says; and then he shifts his hands and twists his wrist.

When Loki pushes on the door of the cell, it swings open easily.

"These are traps," Loki tells him, drawing Thor's gaze away from the door and back to him. "Laufey's tests of how powerful I'm becoming. I've already surpassed him in magic; these are his way of seeing how many other jotuns could still beat me. I will leave when enough time has passed that his assumptions suit me."

Thor grips the door and thrusts it open the rest of the way, striding inside.

Loki does not step back or look surprised when Thor grabs him. He grunts when Thor yanks him close, but doesn't stop him from kissing him.

When Thor bites his lip, Loki shoves him back hard.

"I cannot suddenly have more bruises," he hisses. "Don't ruin this for me."

Thor understands that Loki is thinking of his plots, his plans, of the future, and that he should listen; but he's survived his life in Jotunheim by taking what he needs, and he rarely draws a distinction between what he needs and what he wants. Mjolnir is still tight in his grip.

" _Loki_ \--" Thor growls--and then his breath leaves him when his brother sinks to his knees and pushes aside his loincloth.

Thor grips him hard as Loki kisses his thigh and strokes his cock, knowing that this is a manipulation rather than an appeasement, and knowing as well that he'll fall to it just the same. When Loki takes him in his mouth, Thor digs fingers into his shoulder and knots a fist in his hair, pulling him closer until Loki makes angry noises and uses his teeth. He doesn't care. He keeps his brother as near to him as he can, for as long as possible.

It's never long enough.

Loki shakes him off eventually, when Thor's slumped against the bars of the prison. His brother rises to his feet and wipes his mouth, and looks out at the guards. They're still unconscious; Thor's blows are never kind.

"Jealousy suits you," Loki mutters, cleaning his hand on the edge of Thor's cloak. His voice is hoarse, and for once Thor doesn't like the sound, not when he knows how he's made it be that way. "It's ugly and brutish too."

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks quietly.

Loki gives him that half-bemused, half-weary look he often does.

"I thought it was obvious enough," he says. "You were the only one who knew I was missing nights."

"You lied when I asked where you went," Thor retorts lowly.

"No I didn't," Loki replies. "I just left some things out."

Thor frowns, frustration and anger already resurfacing, and pushes away from the bars.

"You wanted a secret of mine, Thor," Loki says, and turns away. "Now you have three."

He takes his seat on the ground again. "You should go before they wake," he orders, gesturing to the prone guards. "You came here straight from the raid, didn't you?"

"Almost," Thor answers.

"Go to one of your men's homes," Loki says, settling within his cloak again. "Drink. When our father sends a messenger to question you, see if they lie for you or not."

"What?" Thor replies.

"Go," is all Loki says. "Shut the door behind you."  
  
  
When the guards finally return to consciousness, they stumble to their feet and then bash at the bars of Loki's cage, demanding to know what occurred and who's been there. Loki, lying on the ground wrapped in his cloak, props himself up on an elbow.

"Did something happen?" he asks, voice rough with faked sleep.  
  
  
  
  
Four long days pass before Thor returns from the training field to find Loki in their room, taking a bath. He drops Mjolnir at the door and goes and wraps his arms around his chest.

"Your vambraces are getting soaked," Loki says.

"You said you'd be back in a few days," Thor replies. "Did you have to wait so long?"

"I also said perhaps a week," Loki answers. "Try counting. And let go." He pushes at Thor's arm, and water slops over the edge of the tub.

"No," Thor replies, and Loki makes a frustrated noise.

"Perhaps I stayed down there so long because it was the only way to have any peace," his brother mutters, and Thor tenses.

He's silent for a long time, kneeling on the icy floor, before asking, "Is my touch that hateful to you?"

Loki doesn't answer at first, and only bows his head slightly.

"I am not your possession," he finally says, quiet and harsh. "Don't treat me as such. If I say to let go, let _go_."

"If I let you go you run away," Thor argues.

"I come **back** ," Loki retorts.

"When you please!" Thor snarls. "And until then I know nothing, until I find you here or hunt you down or I'm told Father's locked you up again, because you never tell me anything!"

"Ah," Loki says airily, "I was wondering when you'd recall you were angry at me for my women."

Thor's hands curl into fists, but Loki goes on.

"As if you have the right." He trails a finger along the tense muscles in Thor's arm. "Just because you can't take anyone else you want, why does that make it my fault that a jealous brute isn't enough to satisfy me?"

Thor's arms tighten around Loki, pressing against his throat; and his brother laughs at him.

"Empty threats," Loki replies, amused, if with some difficulty. "If you kill me you'll have nothing left at all."

Thor thinks he could stop short of killing him and still have what he wants, for Loki to _stay_ ; but that's an empty threat, too. Loki would always get the better of him in the end.

Instead he forces his arms down, and presses his forehead to the back of Loki's neck.

"Why are you doing this?" he asks wearily. "Why is it always this way between us now?"

Loki is stiff in his arms for a heartbeat, three, more; and then he slumps back, leaning his head against the rim of the tub and Thor's shoulder.

"I don't know," Loki replies with resignation. "It does me no good." His brother closes his eyes and says again, "Let go."

Thor does, letting his arms fall beside Loki in the water, but he doesn't move beyond that and Loki doesn't pull away. Instead, after time passes with only the fire crackling in the silence between them, Loki lays a hand over Thor's and twines their fingers. He brings them up from the water soon after and presses a kiss to Thor's knuckles.

"I don't understand you," Thor mutters.

"Then we are even on one thing, at least," Loki replies, tired but wry; and Thor snorts despite himself.

He kisses Loki's shoulder, but then his brother pushes out of the tub. Thor's expression darkens when he sees the marks lining his back.

"Who did that?" he demands, rising to his feet.

"There are few who would dare," Loki answers. "There's no point in me specifying, you can't avenge me without committing treason."

Thor makes a furious noise in the back of his throat and once again feels the restraints of his duty binding his hands. He starts unfastening the waterlogged vambraces as Loki dries by the fire.

"Whose house did you go to?" Loki asks, and Thor blinks.

"After you left me," his brother clarifies, and then, when Thor names the jotun, makes a considering noise. "He was one of the first who was willing to fight under you, right?"

"Yes," Thor nods.

"Did he say you'd been with him when the messenger arrived?"

"No," Thor answers, frowning slightly. "He said there was a brief gap between when we returned and when I arrived, but he assumed I was putting my things away."

Loki makes another noise. "Well-played."

"What was?" Thor asks, setting the vambraces by the fire. He's careful not to come too close to Loki, no matter how much he wants to reach out to him; it's not worth riling his brother for another time tonight.

"He's a spy," Loki says simply. "Set by Laufey to watch you."

Thor's frown deepens as he stands. "What do you mean, a spy?"

"It's a simple statement, hard to misconstrue," Loki replies.

"Explain anyway," Thor says shortly, and Loki turns his head to look at him.

"He was the first to be willing to join you," his brother says, fastening his loincloth. "He's your most common sparring partner. You've been on how many raids together? And yet for all that, he cannot simply say 'Yes, he was with me'?"

"He wasn't going to lie to the king's messenger," Thor replies.

"He didn't have to lie," Loki says. "He just didn't have to go into detail about the length of your absence."

Thor turns fully to face him. "What do you have against him?"

"I haven't trusted him for months," his brother answers. "This confirms my suspicions."

"But _why?_ "

"Because he was the first to join you," Loki repeats, growing aggravated. "It might have been different if it were that old jotun who's taught you--"

"Hymir," Thor says, but Loki waves the name off.

"--but it wasn't, it was a warrior who--until then--showed no respect for you whatsoever. We are not well-thought of, Thor," Loki belabors. "Anyone who has such a drastic change of heart should be looked on warily."

"It _wasn't_ drastic," Thor argues, aggravated himself now. "It took me time to win their respect. I had to lead multiple battles successfully before they accepted me."

Loki doesn't bother to turn aside fast enough to conceal that he's rolling his eyes. Thor growls and takes a step closer.

"And yet that 'acceptance' doesn't extend far enough for the most minor of omissions," Loki drawls.

"Not everyone is a liar," Thor retorts. "That doesn't make them against me."

" _Why will you not believe me_ when I tell you these things?!" Loki yells, startling him. His brother turns sharply, glaring. "Do you think I would have done the same?"

"How is that--" Thor asks, but Loki doesn't let him finish, striding up to stand toe-to-toe with him.

"If things were reversed, if you'd gone down there for some other reason and then come to me, do you doubt I'd say we'd been together the whole time, whether it was a messenger or Laufey himself who asked?" Loki demands.

"...No," Thor answers, because he knows his brother would.

"Then why won't you believe me when I say it matters that someone _didn't?_ " he asks lowly, and for the first time Thor hears the feeling of betrayal behind his words.

He exhales, and then steps back and sits heavily in his chair.

"He's saved my life in battle before," he argues, but with less vehemence now.

"Of course," Loki replies. "He's to keep a watch on you, not kill you. Laufey doesn't want you dead."

"A watch for **what**?" Thor demands, pressing the heel of his hand against his brow.

"Treason," Loki answers, and Thor jolts and looks up at him.

"I would not," he says tersely.

Loki settles onto his own chair, eyes still on his face. "We are half-breeds," he replies. "Why would Laufey not presume that someday the bad blood in us will overwhelm the jotun?"

"You are cynical," Thor bites off.

"I am cautious," Loki replies evenly. "Because you won't be."

Thor drags his hand over his face.

"If he is a spy," he says slowly, because he still dislikes the thought but for everything Loki has done he's never lied about something this severe. "...If he is, what am I supposed to do?"

"Nothing," Loki answers, "other than keep it in mind."

Thor frowns and looks at him. "Nothing at all?"

"You should begin to feed him false information eventually," Loki replies, "once we know what he's looking for. But until then, just remember he is not an ally, and watch your words around him."

"False in--what do I have to be false about?" Thor asks, torn between offended and bewildered.

Loki gives him that bemused, exhausted look Thor hates, and then closes his eyes. He leans back, resting his head against the furs lining his chair.

"I don't know who's the bigger fool," Loki says quietly. "You," and he sighs, "or me, for always hoping you will just _once_ think like a trickster.

"Just speak more cautiously around him," his brother adds. "That shouldn't offend you."  
  
  
Loki comes to his bed later that night, sliding under the furs and blanket to lean against Thor's side and press his hands to his chest. Thor kisses him gently, touches him gently, until Loki snorts about his abnormal behavior and unties his loincloth.

Thor interprets that as permission and shifts closer as Loki begins to slowly stroke their pricks alongside each together, draping an arm over his side. He tries to take care with the caning marks on his brother's back, but Loki still flinches occasionally when Thor's forearm brushes one.

"Why haven't you healed them yet?" he asks.

"I want to test something," Loki answers.

"What?"

"A bit of magic." He shifts on the bed, then hisses when the motion drags Thor's arm over another welt. Thor pulls his hand away and lays it on Loki's hip instead, a frisson of anger running up his spine.

"Which one did it?" he asks again.

"You don't need to know," his brother answers. "The knowledge won't bring you any pleasure."

Thor is about to retort, but then Loki runs his thumb over the head of his cock and delicately slips his nail beneath the foreskin, and Thor's breath hitches.

"Am I boring you, Thor?" Loki asks, glancing at him through his lashes. "Is that why you'd rather talk?"

"Never," Thor says, breathing shallow. "You never do."

Loki chuckles and then pulls away to stroke more roughly. Thor slides his hand down to his thigh and drags him closer, rocking against him and kissing his throat and jaw until Loki shudders and spills against him. Thor's own release comes soon after, by his own hand while his brother is still shivering and whispering his name.

He pulls the bedcovers higher over them later, and rests an arm along Loki's shoulders so that the pelts won't scrape his back, and waits for him to pull away.

He falls asleep still waiting.  
  
  
Thor wakes chilled later that night, to find that Loki is still in his bed and has stolen most of the furs. His brother grumbles when Thor's laughter rouses him.  
  
  
  
  
The next day, Loki's already in their room when Thor returns from practice. He notes that his brother's welts and lingering bruises are gone. So are the marks Thor left last night; but Loki never keeps those.

"The magic worked," he says with pleasure, studying Loki's back while his brother looks over his shoulder at him in mild exasperation.

"Yes," Loki agrees.

Thor runs careful fingers up one of the ridges along Loki's back. "And it doesn't hurt?"

"You ask after poking me?" Loki says, and then, "No. It's as powerful as the stories tell."

Thor looks up. "What spell is it?"

Loki is silent for a surprisingly long time. Thor eventually frowns and moves around to face him.

"How goes it with that spy of yours?" Loki says.

Thor fails to see the connection between these things, but answers anyway. "I haven't spoken to him again. I trained with Hymir instead today."

A small smile crosses Loki's face at that, and he reaches out to tuck Thor's hair back.

"You love me, don't you," he says quietly, fingertips brushing the shell of Thor's ear.

Thor blinks. "What is this?"

It's the wrong thing to say. The smile disappears and Loki shifts back, and Thor realizes it was a question, not a statement. He grabs Loki's hand before his brother can pull away completely and holds tight, hoping that just once it won't be a clone instead.

"Of course," he answers forcefully. "You should know that."

His brother studies him in silence for a while, and then says "Let go."

Thor does, reluctantly, and Loki moves to the fireplace.

Thor watches in bemusement as his brother douses the fire and then wipes aside the wood and ashes, until he can prise up one of the flagstones and remove a small leather bag.

Loki brushes off his hands, and then opens the bag and pulls out a golden object.

"What's that?" Thor asks.

"Your education is shameful," Loki says, "but you ought to know this. It's one of Idunn's apples."

Thor's eyes widen.

He strides over and stares down at the apple in Loki's palm as his brother removes a knife from the bag. A quarter is gone already, but the rest of it gleams even in the darkened room. "Impossible. I thought nobody could handle them but her."

"Yet here it is," Loki replies, and cuts a thin slice. "You wrenched your shoulder in training again, didn't you? Eat this."

Thor takes it and does, the fruit melting away on his tongue almost before he can chew. It tastes like the apples he's found in Midgard, but also like the tang of metal--almost akin yet dissimilar to the bite of electricity his storms carry--and of the ashes on Loki's fingers. Thor runs his tongue over his teeth, not sure he likes the taste.

A moment later he rubs his shoulder as the ache in it dissipates. "Amazing," he says, shaking his head. "How did you steal this?"

"I didn't," Loki answers quietly. "She gave it to me freely at Odin's request."

Thor stills, and looks at him. His brother meets his eyes, hands loose at his sides.

"...I don't understand," Thor says.

"Yes you do," Loki replies. "You just don't want to believe."

Thor drops his arm slowly. "Loki," he says, the words feeling thick on his tongue, "what have you done?"

"Traveled," he answers. "Gone elsewhere. Listened to other words than Laufey's careful lies. I've sought my true home, Thor; mine and yours." Loki tilts his head, and then asks, "You've known me almost my entire life, brother. Is this really a surprise?"

Thor shifts, struck with the urge to pace, to **move** , but unwilling to take his eyes away from Loki in case he disappears again, this time to somewhere much farther than Thor ever thought. "There is being angry and then there's committing _treason_ ," he spits. "Did you even think this through, Loki? This is no petty trick. Our father--"

"My father, maybe," Loki interrupts. "Not yours."

Thor clenches his fists. "What do you--" he starts to demand, and then jerks his head and drops it, because he doesn't want to hear Loki's clever, twisting words. "He raised me. He's my father."

Loki sneers. "We raised _ourselves_ ," he retorts. "Laufey did little but see that we didn't starve within his walls."

"And you think that justifies a betrayal like this?!"

Loki looks at him for a long moment, and then says, "Did you know I was abandoned in the temple when I was born?"

Thor startles and stares at him.

Loki curls his mouth up in a half-smile. "There's an advantage to making enemies," he says. "They're always eager to tell you the truth, so long as it's unpleasant."

Thor shakes his head. "You can't think--"

"If I was never a wanted son, why should I be filial?" Loki demands coldly. "What loyalty am I to owe to the one who wished me _dead?_ "

Thor's hands begin to fist again. "So you would rather abandon your home and birthright and side with the Aesir?"

Loki rolls the apple agitatedly in his palm. "My 'home' is a frozen wasteland I'm ill-suited to, and my birthright is to have my existence tolerated to serve as a companion to you. If **that** is what remaining in Jotunheim has to offer," his brother says flatly, "I would rather be a god."

Loki stills his hand and looks him in the eye. "Wouldn't you?"

Thor jerks his shoulders back. "What?"

"I said I found our true home," Loki says evenly. "You are the only thing here I would miss. Come with me."

" _Asgard_ ," Thor sneers. "My true home, that place?"

"You've conveniently ignored several things I've said," Loki replies. "Surely you've seen how your fellow warriors--true Jotnar--can freeze the Midgardians with a touch. I know you've heard how they leave Aesir skin blackened from cold. Yet has anyone you've ever touched had that befall them? Or has it only ever been _you_ who's left frostbitten after--"

Thor shoves him against the mantle, knocking the breath from Loki and causing him to drop the apple and bag. Mjolnir's handle slaps into his palm without his consciously calling it. " _ **Enough**._ "

"Who taught you to hate them?" Loki asks, gaze steady. "Whose purpose does it serve for you to do so?"

Thor snarls and shifts the handle in his hand--and then feels a sharp pain in his side.

He jerks back and Loki breaks free of his grip, darting to the other side of the room. When Thor looks down, he finds the knife jammed below his ribs. He glares at his brother, who's staring at him with wide eyes; and then Loki disappears.

Thor wrenches the knife out and flings it to the ground. "Loki!"

But the room turns up empty. Thor goes through it once and then throws the door open hard enough that the hinges twist, and strides out into the corridor.

He makes it halfway to the corner before he stops and slumps heavily against the wall. It isn't the wound that stays him; he can already feel his flesh knitting together, an unpleasant sensation, the Aesir's magic wending through him. Thor remains there, dragging a hand over his face and twisting Mjolnir in his grip, until he hears the shattering of wood from the bedroom.

When he goes back inside, he finds Loki's bed stripped of furs, and the remaining pile of firewood gone. The sealed window has been broken open; snow is slowly drifting in, dusting the floor and steadily covering a single falcon feather lying on the sill.

Thor looks out and sees the falcon already high in the sky, out of range of the archers at practice in the training field, heading for the walls of Utgard.

Thor shoves away and faces the room again, still unwilling to go to their father and tell him what's occurred, but knowing he has to. He stares blankly at the door leading to the corridor, to the great yard, to Loki's doom; and then he notices the satchel propped on his chair.

Inside are food and furs and all the other necessities for a journey. And, sitting on top of these, a quarter of the golden apple.

It glints when he lifts it. It does not shrivel in the cold draft of the room, or wither in his palm: it is magic, and a gift freely given.

Thor closes his eyes and thinks that for all else about him, his brother loves him.

He remembers once more tearing through that giant's home after the bloodlust abated, sure that his brother was lost, terrified that he was killed by his hand, unable to fathom how he could endure the rest of his life in the cold, dismissive halls of their father's house without him; and Thor knows Jotunheim is no home to him without Loki.

His brother loves him, and for all the frustration, ugliness, and weariness it causes, Thor loves him back.

He hooks Mjolnir to his belt, and then slings the satchel over his shoulder and leaves the room. He is not stopped when he goes from his father's hall, or when he passes through the gates of Utgard and out into the land; few pay any attention to the actions of Laufey's loyal, war-spoil third son at all.  
  
  
  
  
Thor tracks the falcon for two days and a night with little pause and less rest; and finally he stops amid the endless waste where no one makes their home and says, "Loki, enough."

The falcon wheels through the driving snow for a time and then flutters down. When it lands, Loki stands before him.

Thor knows it's his brother; the similarity is there. But the sight is strange regardless: the color has been leeched from Loki's skin, from his eyes. Even seeing the milky patches on Loki's flesh was no preparation for this.

Thor reaches out and runs his hand over his brother's forehead, unfamiliarly smooth now that the ridges which should be there are gone. This skin feels so frail beneath his palm--soft, when it should be leathered. It can't be any protection against the cold and the wind and the snow.

Thor touches this new form of Loki's and thinks he will have to learn his brother all over again.

"What _is_ this?" he demands, because it must be some treachery of the Aesir.

"A taint in the blood," Loki replies, and then reaches up and wraps his hand around Thor's. "You have it, too."

Loki's hand burns where he grips him. Thor hisses at the sensation; it's worse than frostbite, worse than anything any other jotun has done. He wrenches his hand away and stares down at pale handprint marring his skin.

Loki holds out his hand. "You came this far after me, brother. Was it to kill me?"

Mjolnir lays solid against his thigh, fastened to his belt. He has drawn it only once since he began chasing Loki, to hunt. He doesn't reach for it now.

"No," Thor says, and Loki reaches out further.

"Then trust me," he murmurs.  
  
  
Thor is shuddering by the time Loki peels away all of Laufey's spells, partly from the cold and mostly from the rawness, the new-feeling of his skin. Thor stares at his hands, his arms, himself, and quakes.

Loki makes wordless, half-comforting noises as he pulls a heavy fur cloak from his pack and drapes it over Thor's shoulders. Thor keens at the sensation.

"You'll adjust soon enough," his brother promises. "It's easier to bear in Asgard. It would be even easier if you were a shape-shifter, but...." Loki brushes a hand over Thor's hair, smoothing it down. "When we're settled there, I'll show you. It isn't so different."

Thor grips the edges of the cloak, pulling it tighter around him.

"We should keep moving," Loki says, and lays a hand against the back of his neck. It feels like nothing Thor has ever known, and only their surroundings--always unpleasant, now threatening--keep him from leaning into it, from turning and clinging to his brother until this skin somehow makes sense.

"Laufey will know we're gone by now," Loki says, and pushes at Thor insistently; and he goes.  
  
  
They make camp after it's grown dark, when Loki realizes Thor is on the cusp of pushing himself beyond what he can bear. The fire is small to keep their location hidden, but Loki pulls more furs out of his pack than it should rightly hold and bundles them about him.

"I feel ridiculous," Thor mutters, when his teeth stop chattering.

"You look ridiculous," Loki replies, slicing off a hunk of salted meat and holding it out. "So it suits."

Thor takes the food with a scowl. "How long did it take you to adjust?"

"Not too long," his brother replies. "It doesn't feel much different to me like this."

Thor makes a disbelieving face. "It feels _completely_ different," he retorts.

"Yes, well," Loki says, "I'm a half-breed."

Thor looks at him for a long time, but Loki says nothing else. At last, Thor closes his eyes, and exhales through his teeth.

"And what am I?" he asks quietly.

"A hostage," Loki answers. "Taken to keep the Aesir in line. Apparently Laufey stripped your memories when he cast those spells, but I gleaned little more than that."

Thor's fists clench beneath the furs.

Loki reaches out and taps Mjolnir's handle with a smirk. "He must have been terrified when he saw Odin made it so you could wield that. I was hoping to see it, but he managed to hold it in."

Loki blinks, and then bites his lip, and then looks over at Thor with a faint smile. "Clearly you're the son of someone important, if the All-father went to such lengths and gave you such a grand weapon. You must invite me to that hall one day."

"What?" Thor says; but Loki only starts to cut another slice of meat.

He shakes off the blankets, ignoring the sharp bite of the cold, and grabs Loki's arm. "What do you mean?"

Loki tenses in his grip, and this time his small half-smile is clearly fake. "Or not."

Thor yanks him closer, making Loki curse when he spills the meat and knife, practically pulling him into his lap. "Were you just going to abandon me when we reached Asgard?!"

"What?" Loki asks this time, baffled. Then he blinks again, and his expression turns incredulous.

"Thor," he says slowly, "we are not brothers. You are not a Laufeyson, and I am no child of your sire."

"What does that matter?" Thor demands. "You said I've known you your entire life--does that mean nothing now?"

"I doubt it will mean much if anything to your parents," Loki replies. "They're not going to take a jotun into their hall just because you feel akin to him."

"Then I won't live in it either," Thor says lowly, and cups Loki's neck. "Wherever won't have you, won't have me. You _are my brother_."

Loki stares at him with the same wide-eyed expression as when he stabbed Thor two days ago, the same one as when Thor had asked if he could kiss him all those long years ago; and then at last he shakes his head faintly.

"You are very foolish," he mutters, and Thor growls and tugs him into a kiss.

Loki chuckles a few breaths later, and drapes his arms around Thor's shoulders briefly before pulling back.

"You're freezing," he says. "Wrap up again."

While Thor is pulling the furs to him, Loki shifts and asks, "Do you mean it?"

"Why do you always question me?" he replies, aggravated.

"Then let's swear it," Loki says, and Thor looks at him.

A moment later he reaches out and brushes his knuckles over Loki's cheek, and wonders if **this** will finally convince his brother of his affection, and doubts it but agrees anyway. "Very well."

The knife landed in the fire when it fell. Loki fishes it out with a twig and a lot of grumbling, and then casts a spell to cool it down enough to touch again. Thor notices that his fingertips briefly turn blue when he does.

After Loki makes the cut along his forearm, Thor takes the knife from his hand and does the same, and then presses their arms together so that the blood comingles. Loki intones the vow, and Thor repeats it; and then his brother entwines their fingers and lays his head on Thor's shoulder. Thor kisses his temple.

"The Aesir will probably not consider that an acceptable aspect of brotherhood," Loki says dryly, and laughs at Thor's growl.  
  
  
Later, when they've bedded down--Thor wrapped in the furs, with Loki at his chest and the dying fire at his back, as if they were children again--he lays a hand over the second gold armband Loki now wears in addition to the one Thor gifted him all those years ago. "What's the tale behind this one? It's new."

"It's old," Loki replies. "But I had to conceal it lest Laufey recognize the similarity to Draupnir."

"Draupnir?" he repeats, and Loki exhales.

"Odin's armring," he explains. "It drops eight like it every nine nights. It's where all his wealth comes from. I have so much to teach you so that you don't embarrass us," he adds in a mutter.

Thor makes a grumbling noise in the back of his throat. "And he gave one of the replicas to you?"

"Yes," Loki agrees. "He was courting me quite assiduously."

Thor's hand tightens.

"'Courting'?" he repeats; and Loki cracks up laughing so hard he curls in on himself.

"Thor, _please_ ," he snerks. "Give me some credit for taste." Loki swallows down one more snicker, and then stretches out again. "And self-preservation. I didn't want to be in Asgard so bad that I would whore myself for it," he adds, offended. "There are other worlds."

"...'Self-preservation,'" Thor replies, because there's no point in reminding himself how difficult it is to sift Loki's truth from his lies. " **That** is not a quality I would normally apply to you."

"I yet live, don't I?"

"Because of that gilded tongue of yours," Thor retorts. "Not because of having the sense not to create trouble for yourself in the first place."

"It's only trouble if I'm caught," Loki answers with a half-smirk. "How tedious to live otherwise."

"'A quick tongue, unless its owner keeps watch on it, often talks itself into trouble,'" Thor reminds him, and Loki snorts.

"Really," he drawls, glancing over his shoulder at him. "Of all our schooling to remember, you picked that?"

"How would I ever be able to forget it, when I was reminded near-daily?" Thor replies, deadpan, and Loki laughs again.

Thor huffs but can't help a smile. He soon settles more comfortably under the furs and then looks at his brother as Loki does the same, thinking of all the magic he's seen him work so skillfully with his words and hands.

"You said you've grown more powerful that our father," Thor says eventually. Loki stiffens slightly under his arm.

"Laufey," he corrects. "And yes."

"Why didn't you notice those spells he cast on me sooner?"

"I did," Loki answers--Loki the concealer, Loki the untrustworthy, Loki the untrusting--and adds, "but I kept it to myself."

Thor makes an aggravated noise in the back of his throat, but is not that surprised by the admission.

"You are very foolish," Loki repeats softly.

"Be quiet," Thor mutters, and bites one of the knots of his spine. Loki chuckles.

"You'll never be able to say you were not warned," his brother murmurs, and relaxes against him again.  
  
  
The next morning Thor fights with the campsite, trying to erase their trail as quickly as possible, trying to think which of the hunters who trained him will be sent after them. "I need more time," he tells Loki, examining the snow.

"We don't have it," he replies.

"Taking a little time now to conceal our tracks will buy us more in the future," Thor argues.

"Obliterating it will be faster," Loki says. "Step far back."

Thor does so, assuming Loki has some magic spell planned. His brother shifts his hands, and the Casket of Winters appears in them.

Within seconds, the campsite is lost under the debris of a sudden storm. Loki smirks.

Thor stares at the Casket, disbelieving. "Loki, this is treason."

Loki gives him that half-bemused, half-weary look, and shifts his hands again. The Casket disappears.

"Thor," he asks, "what did you think we were _doing?_ "

"This--"

"I had to ransom my way into Asgard somehow," Loki says, and shakes his cloak over his shoulders as he begins walking. "And better we have it than Laufey, when he comes after us. Now hurry," he adds. "There's still a long way to go."  
  
  
  
  
The sun is not even midway through her course when Loki curses violently and jerks around to look behind them.

Thor turns as well, and squints up at the sky where Loki is glaring. A dark shape is barely visible in the distance.

"What is it?" he asks, reaching for Mjolnir as Loki swears again.

"Thiassi," his brother spits. "Damn."

A second later Loki turns and presses a hand to the back of his neck. "I don't know how this will feel since you can't change shape yourself, but it shouldn't be much worse than yesterday."

That's all the warning Thor receives before his bones shatter and reform.

His shout of pain comes out as a shrill birdcry. Thor barely manages to process that everything has become **huge** and the snow is suddenly up to his chest--now covered in feathers--as Loki returns to his falcon shape.

Loki snatches him up in sharp talons and soars into the air, diving through the wind currents and flying as fast as he can. Thor squirms until the claws are no longer digging so deeply into him, and watches as Thiassi slowly, slowly--but steadily--gains on them.

If he knew how to form words like this, he would curse Loki for thinking of flight first and not giving him a chance to fight. But he doesn't, so he's left to watch.  
  
  
Soon the frozen land of Jotunheim drops away, turning into the glaciers that line the border with Midgard; and then Loki sails past those and into a star-filled void Thor has never seen before. It becomes impossible to spot Thiassi after that, and Thor hopes Loki knows where he's going, because he sees no possible place to land anymore.  
  
  
After time passes--he doesn't know how much, unfamiliar stars make poor guideposts--Loki dips sharply to the side and sinks down, or up. Thor stops trying to determine directions and looks around.

The glittering rainbow of the Bifrost is below them. Loki sinks farther, keeping the bridge to their left, and then makes for a world of gold and silver.

Behind them, a falcon shrieks close by. Loki makes a furious sound that could be either bird or man, and pushes harder toward Asgard's walls. Thor craves again to be able to wield Mjolnir--Thiassi is so close he could easily strike him.

Loki makes another disbelieving noise, and Thor shifts his vision just long enough to see the Aesir piling wood and oil along their walls.

 _What **is** this?_ he thinks, and then sees one of the Aesir raise a torch.

His brother distinctly curses and dives down into Asgard, the jotun-falcon right behind them.

Loki barely clears the flames as they surge up. Behind them, Thiassi screams as the fire catches him.

They tumble to the ground, the hard impact all the more jarring since Loki drops their guises as they fall. Thor lies unmoving on the grass for a moment, trying to get used to having arms again, and legs that bend properly instead of backward; beside him, Loki is laughing. The hem of his cloak is charred.

Loki shakes his head, coughing out another gleeful snicker. "I wasn't sure we'd make it!"

Thor reaches out and punches him.  
  
  
  
  
The Aesir are restrained in their reception, staring and murmuring as he and Loki are led toward Odin's great hall by his son.

"Generous welcome," Loki says casually, shaking ashes from his cloak.

"We knew the cunning Loki would find a way through," Balder answers, politely enough.

"Mm," his brother replies, and smiles in a way that shows many teeth. Thor shifts closer and then forces himself to release Mjolnir's handle when Balder glances back at him.

"Are you unharmed?" he asks.

When Thor doesn't answer, Loki says, "Yes."

Balder looks forward, and nods once, and continues to lead the way to Valaskialf.  
  
  
Odin's hall is grand--vaster than Thor expected, more golden than he expected, but if Odin rebuilt a tower it makes sense that he would rebuild his house, too--but surprisingly empty. There are Aesir in it, but far fewer than those outside. These are mostly warriors. Thor sizes them up, studies the hall, and lets his palm brush Mjolnir's handle once more.

"Stop that," Loki whispers over his shoulder, as Balder says, "Your guests, Father."

"Welcome back, Loki," Odin says. "You arrived safely?"

"Oh, yes," his brother replies carelessly. "It was an exhilarating trip."

Thor manages not to snort.

"And with you?" Odin asks.

"The mighty Thor," Loki introduces, taking a step to the side and gesturing back to him, "wielder of Mjolnir."

Odin half-rises from his throne at the sight of him.

Thor tenses. He has caused damage to much of the god's beloved Midgard; he has done his best to make his name a fearful word on the Aesir's lips, in order to win his father's--Laufey's--approval. His hand finds Mjolnir's handle unconsciously.

"This is a trap," Thor mutters, when Loki pauses.

"Peace," Loki replies. "No blood is ever to be shed in Asgard. Is that not right, All-father?"

"Yes," Odin says, oddly, as if something is caught in his throat. He clears it a moment later and takes his seat again--but he continues to stare at Thor with an intensity that keeps him on edge, keeps him glancing at the gods that surround them.

"Thiassi looked dead enough to me," Thor grumbles under his breath.

"Peace," Loki says again, much quieter, and lays a hand on Thor's arm. "Let's keep that to ourselves for now."

Thor clenches his jaw, but releases Mjolnir yet again.

"As I said," Loki continues, dropping his hand and turning back to the throne. He strides up to the dais, shifts his hands and retrieves the Casket of Winters, and then lays it at Odin's feet. "Journeying with me from Jotunheim is Thor."

The look in Loki's eyes when he raises his head is a challenge only Odin sees. "My sworn blood brother."  
  
  
  
  


We all know how this story ends.


End file.
